Dame Cicely Saunders Biography

Part 1

Beginnings

Dame Cicely Saunders was born in 1918, the oldest of three children.  She was educated at Roedean School (1932 to 1937) and then went to St Anne’s College Oxford to read PPE.  The war intervened and with the sense that she wanted to do something more useful, she left to study nursing at St Thomas’ Hospital, qualifying in 1944.  After the war, she returned to St Anne’s and in one year completed her degree and got a Diploma in Public and Social Administration passing with distinction, then moved on to become a Lady Almoner.