Kathleen’s grandfather Robert Drennnan, also had an interesting background and was the Editor of the Totnes Times:

“At six and seven year old I used to go down into the office in Fore Street with him.

“I love newspapers.

“I read all sorts and I used to go down to the office that used to be next to the Grammar School. “Grandad and I always knew local politics.

“My Grandfather and Grandmother became Mayor and Mayoress of Totnes twice.

Kathleen has vivid memories of VE Day:

“A lot of Americans were in the park and the families used to invite them into their houses, you see.

“The white Americans were in the park and the black Americans were up the top of Bridgetown in a field in Jubilee Road.

“One of the Americans tuned in to this old wireless set that somebody had in Station Road and got the American Forces Network we heard about the war being finished.

“We didn't have to wait for Churchill's announcement at three o'clock in the afternoon.

“Of course, we all streamed into Totnes and we danced up and down all day and all night in Fore Street there.

“Someone brought a piano out on the pavement and played all the old songs that we knew during the war.”

Fast forward to the 1990s and having fallen in the bathroom of her home in Totnes, Kathleen’s mother had moved to the Torybrook residential home in Plympton..

Ironically the Conservative-run Devon County Council wanted to close it and all the other council-run residential homes in the county.

Kathleen wasn’t going to take that lying down as she explained: “I organized a demonstration and a lot of elderly people on a traffic coach went up to Devon County and of course we demonstrated and we lost and we came back and I said so my mother said well we'll go to the High Court so we went to the High Court with them two coach loads of elderly people from here.”

They ended pursuing it to the Queen’s Bench Division and Kathleen was introduced by another group of protesters to Tony Blair who predicted, sadly correctly, that they would loose.

Taking a different line Kathleen decided if you can’t beat them, join them and stood successfully to become a County Councillor for the Liberal Democrats where she served for six years.

The council changed colour and became Liberal Democrat-led itself and they managed to overturn the decision and save the homes for another decade.

On July 1998 Kathleen, following her grandfather’s footsteps, became Honorary Alderman of the County of Devon in recognition of the eminent services rendered by her to the Council of the County of Devon’.

Still closely following politics she said:

“I'm not a supporter of the Labour Party I don't think Keir Starmer’s the right man for the job.

“Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Manchester is a fantastic man and if he had still been an MP would make an excellent Prime Minister.”