ABSTRACT
Elinor Goldschmieds life and work spanned almost the whole of the twentieth century. The contribution she herself considered most important, the Treasure Basket, has now been widely adopted, not only in the UK but in many other countries around the world. It is hard to remember now how long it took for ground-breaking nature of this apparently simple idea to be recognised. Elinor was far ahead of her time in seeing, before it was scientifically proven, the vital role of sensory experience in forming connections in the rapidly developing brains of the very youngest children. Elinor was born 1910, in small village of Lower Tuffley in rural Gloucestershire. She was called Violet after her mother, but much disliked the name and insisted on being called Elinor from an early age. Her political education continued at the London School of Economics where she won a scholarship to the Psychiatric Social Work course, supplementing her grant by working as an au pair.
