Rosalind Pulver obituary

My mother, Rosalind Pulver, who has died aged 91, was gregarious, sociable and a natural born organiser – I remember her shaking up my school’s parents’ association in the 1970s, her greatest triumph being getting the pupils a tour of McDonald’s HQ that included free burgers. She was born and grew up in London, first in Paddington, in a flat above her father’s menswear shop in Church Street market, and then in Hendon. As with many children of her generation, her life was interrupted by the second world war; her father, Louis, was called up to the Home Guard and posted to the south coast (changing the family name from Cohen to Collins at the same time). Rosalind went to a convent school in Golders Green called La Sagesse; it was the only place that would allow children to stay until early evening when her mother, Sarah, could pick her up after the shop closed. After taking a typing course at Kilburn Polytechnic (the College of North West London), she got her first job – as a secretary at the BBC, working for the BBC Concert Orchestra at the Camden theatre (now the nightclub Koko) for conductors including Gilbert Vinter and Charles Mackerras. The BBC in those days was quite an upper