Sidonie Goossens

She made her professional debut in 1921, was a founder member of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and went on to play for more than half a century until her retirement in 1981.

[1] She was born in Liscard, Wallasey, Cheshire, a member of the famous Goossens musical family that had emigrated to Britain from Belgium in the 19th century.

In the late 1920s and early 1930s their London home (5 Wetherby Gardens, SW5) became a regular meeting place for musicians, including Arnold Bax, Constant Lambert, Patrick Hadley, Spike Hughes, Alan Rawsthorne and William Walton.

[6] With her second husband, Norman Millar, she moved to Reigate in Surrey, where they raised pigs and poultry at the 400-year-old Woodstock Farm, Gadbrook Road, Betchworth.

[7] She was a close personal friend of Sir Adrian Boult and Pierre Boulez,[8] who wrote of her: 'Always her presence was reassuring, her professional conscience irreproachable, her attitude faultless.