The Extraordinary Life Of Miss Griff

In another of our articles marking the 75th commemoration of the end of World War II, we discover the remarkable story of Anne Griffith-Jones.

- Fiona Ritson

“Our children and grandchildren are sure, one day, to be asking us when World War II began. Well, World War II began and finished in the Far East.” – The Straits Times, 8 December 1945. So here we are, those grandchildren. Seventy-five years on, this snippet serves as a reminder – if one were needed – that the invasions of Manchuria in 1932 and China in 1937 were the harbingers of WWII, and that a global event plays out differently across the world.

But of course, the chain of events that led to WWII started farther back than that, in the turmoil left by WWI. One person who lived courageously through both – experiencing the first war in the West and the second in Southeast Asia – was the indomitable Anne Griffith-Jones, founder of Tanglin Trust School.

For a story of resilience that shines brightly across the war years and down the generations, look no further than the full (but not always free) life of “Miss Griff”.

From her young adult years, Anne Griffith-Jones was a force for change. In the UK in 1913, she became Swansea’s local secretary for the National Union of Women’s Suffragette Societies and an active figure in the British suffragette movement. After WWI broke out, she worked in a munitions factory as a welfare officer, for which she was awarded an MBE. Unbeknown to her family – who no doubt would not have approved of it as a hobby for a young lady – Anne liked to play football and after the war joined the Welsh ladies football team. Her love of sport and physical fitness was to serve her well through the trials of the coming years.

The pull of the peninsula