A FORMER Hampshire county councillor who had wartime service as a codebreaker has died aged 101.

Anne, Lady Jaffray, was described by the Telegraph as "one of the last of the debs of Bletchley Park, who enjoyed a rich and varied postwar life."

Born into an aristocratic family, she was privately educated and attended university in Germany where she met Hitler's foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, and, according to the Telegraph, recalled him as “a sinister man … alarmingly cold and polite”. He was hanged after the Nuremburg trials in 1946.

Her knowledge of German led to secret work at the codebreaking base Bletchley Park. She returned there in 2014.

Lady Jaffray moved to Hampshire after the war and lived for many years at The Manor House, Priors Dean, near Petersfield.

She entered democratic public life in the 1950s, serving on Petersfield District Council before in 1964 her election to Hampshire County Council. She continued as an Independent until retirement in 1980.

Her desire to halt any malicious political party intervention in rural affairs was supported by the then Conservative MP for Petersfield, Miss Joan Quennell.

Her speciality was education. She believed it should be consistent and non-political and she strongly resisted the centralising instincts of Conservative PM Edward Heath between 1970-74. Consequently, her membership of the Conservative and Unionist Association was struck off in April 1973.

In 1976 she met the Queen at the opening of the Queen Elizabeth Park, Butser Hill, near Petersfield.

She was a member of the WI throughout these years.

Twice married, the first ended in divorce and her second husband died young in 1953. She had two children, and her daughter Annette predeceased her in 2015. She is survived by her son, Sir William Jaffray.