As a war-time teenager, she was evacuated to C. S. Lewis's house in Oxford and she is said to have been the inspiration for Lucy Pevensie in the Chronicles of Narnia.
She was highly regarded in the household and Lewis in a letter to Flewett's mother, Winifred, on 4 January 1945, said: "I have never really met anything like her unselfishness and patience and kindness and shall feel deeply in her debt as long as I live.
After two years, she left the Lewises to take up a place at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), her fees being paid by Lewis.
Following her graduation, she embarked upon a successful career in the West End under the stage name Jill Raymond.
[3] In 2001 she received an Honorary Doctorate in Civil Law from the University of East Anglia "for services to the theatre."