ONE hundred years ago today, Irene Trusler was born in London.

She worked for most of her life as a nurse abroad, living in Iran and East Africa.

Now the grandmother-of-five, who married John Purry in 1965, lives in Victoria Road, Oxford, and has kept a home in the city for almost half a century.

Her son Jeremy, 56, said she had worked as a relief nurse during the Second World War in Vienna, Austria, and during the 1940s and 1950s trained nurses in Iran.

But she was repatriated after the British and American-backed coup d’état of 1953, which saw the overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh.

Miss Trusler married her first husband, Philip Ashley-Carter, in London in 1957 and that year they had their son Jeremy.

In 1961 Mr Ashley-Carter died aged 48 and Mrs Ashley-Carter and her son moved to Ethiopia.

There she worked at the Princess Tsehai Memorial Hospital in Addis Ababa, training nurses.

She even met the Queen at the hospital in 1965 on a state visit and became good friends with the pioneering obstetrician and gynaecologist Dr Catherine Hamlin.

In her memoirs Mrs Purry recalled meeting two nurses she had trained years earlier during a return visit to Ethiopia in 1988: “They are now qualified sisters and working for Dr Hamlin...

meeting them again was a case for many happy tears.”

After marrying John Purry in 1965, a chartered accountant for Price Waterhouse, she gave up nursing to engage in charitable work in the British community.

Mr Purry, who also volunteered with charitable causes, was in 1975 awarded the OBE at Buckingham Palace.

In 1979 the couple moved to Zambia, where they spent five years before returning to the UK.

Mrs Purry’s retirement saw her become more active in the Oxford community. She was a member of the Conservative Party, and was a regular attendee of lunch groups such as the Clarendon Club.

During the 1990s she was the chair of governors at Cutteslowe First School, now Cutteslowe Primary School, and between 1990 and 1993 was president of the Anglo-Ethiopian Society in London.

She is also thought to be one of the Open University’s oldest graduates, after she gained a degree in social sciences aged 84.

Mrs Purry, whose husband John died aged 78 in 1991, will be celebrating the milestone on Saturday with her family and friends.

Her son Jeremy said: “Mum always lived a full and busy life. We are immensely proud of what she has achieved.”