We are delighted to announce that our alumna Patricia Davies (née Owtram, 1951, BLitt English) is the newest recipient of an Honorary Fellowship from Somerville College.
Pat Owtram arriving at the Dorothy Hodgkin Memorial Lecture 2024 with Principal Jan Royall before receiving applause as news of her Honorary Fellowship was announced.
There can be few more deserving recipients of this honour. As a young woman during World War Two, Pat Owtram did vital secret work manning covert listening stations on the South Coast, for which she would later receive the Légion d’Honneur, France’s highest order of merit. After the war, Pat became a noted television producer, helping to devise shows including The Sky At Night, University Challenge and Coronation Street. More recently, Pat won a 7 decade-long battle to have the plagiarised authorship of her BLitt thesis restored. Somerville played a significant role in this case for restorative justice, which you can read about here.
Now 100 years old, Patricia describes herself as the only centenarian in Chiswick who knows how to use a Sten gun. In 2023, she was named The Oldie magazine’s ‘Oldie Secret Agent of the Year’ by Gyles Brandreth.
Pat Owtram together with her younger sister Jean Argles (née Owtram, 1925-2023) during and after the war, and in Chiswick wearing her Victory medal and Bletchley badge
Patricia joined the WRNS in 1942 aged only 18, following her father’s capture and internment by the Japanese army. As a German-speaker, she was selected for work manning wireless intercept stations around the coast. Her intercepts of German military communications were translated, with encoded messages sent to Bletchley Park. After the war’s conclusion, Pat was offered a role as a translator in the Nuremburg Trials, but instead chose to return home to her newly-reunited family. Unbeknownst to Pat, her younger sister Jean Argles (née Owtram) had also worked as a codebreaker for SOE, decoding messages from agents in the field. The sisters only learned about their shared experiences after the war, leading them to write the popular memoir ‘Code-Breaking Sisters’.
Pat was informed of her latest honour when returning to Somerville earlier this month for the annual Dorothy Hodgkin Lecture. Speaking of the news, Pat commented, ‘I certainly never expected to become a Fellow of an Oxford College. However, I feel very privileged to have been considered worthy of this recognition. My family were not terribly supportive of university education for women, so I was only able to attend university because I received a grant in recognition of my wartime service in the WRNS. I must say I found it a wonderful opportunity and stepping stone to an interesting career!’
Our Principal Jan Royall added, ‘It is a privilege to have met Pat and welcomed her as an Honorary Fellow of Somerville College. Her extraordinary life embraces so many historic chapters, through all of which she has evidently moved with the same combination of intellect, integrity and humour that show her to be a quintessential Somervillian.’