During the war, she met Stephan Körner, a fellow Czech refugee, who was studying for his doctorate in philosophy at Cambridge; the couple married in London in 1944.

"[9] Not content simply to stay at home raising a family, she became a member of the committee overseeing the two local long-stay psychiatric hospitals in the 1950s.

By 1976, she had become the chair of the regional health authority for the south-west, gaining a reputation as an informed and intelligent commentator on health-service issues.

[1] In 1967, she had studied the use of computers in the health service for the South Western Regional Hospital Board (as it then was), and in 1980 she was asked to chair a full-scale national review of the way information was generated and handled in the NHS.

[10] The Körner Committee studied the matter for four years and produced six major sets of recommendations, all of which were adopted and put into action by the government.