ABSTRACT
When, in 1994, I wrote as President to Nina Coltart expressing the hope that she would reconsider her decision to resign from our Society, I ought to have known better. In her polite but firm reply, it was clear that the lady was not for turning. This brief exchange of letters epitomized Nina’s character—strong, lucid, and fearless. Having lost both parents in a wartime rail crash, as they were travelling to visit their two daughters, evacuated to Cornwall, it would not be unreasonable to think that Nina, then aged twelve, had a special awareness of what it was like to be alone. For all her extrovert manner, and her many friends and colleagues, she was always a very private person, always alone.
