Dame Alison Munro: Forthright civil servant and High Mistress of St Paul's Girls' School

Alison Munro was a Renaissance woman, all right – a highly successful senior civil servant, a brilliant international negotiator, a reforming and much-loved High Mistress of St Paul's Girls' School, in west London, chair of a range of committees at national and local level, wit, raconteur, sailor, tennis player, bridge player, a woman who taught herself computer skills in her eighties and cruised in her nineties despite a crippling series of strokes.

She was born Alison Donald in 1914 in Liskeard, Cornwall. In 1925 her father, who was a doctor, emigrated with the family (there were two boys and a girl as well as Alison) to South Africa, near Cape Town, for a better life, as he thought, and a better climate. But the mother died shortly after and the doctor a few months later, leaving his four children orphaned in a strange land. Alison was 13 and, with her brothers and sister, determined to resist all attempts by relatives in England to split them up. The trustees of the estate appointed a housekeeper, who became a second mother to the children and stayed with them, even after their return to England, until she died.

Alison and her sister continued at Wynberg High School for Girls. But clearly education in England was better and the family returned in 1930 with Alison determined to get into St Paul's Girls' School. Despite being told there was no place for her, she sat herself down, aged 16, in the High Mistress's outer office for a day and most of the evening until the High Mistress took pity and gave her a place. This was typical of Alison Donald, who never admitted defeat.

She went up from St Paul's to St Hilda's at Oxford, read PPE and got a Third. This reflected the time spent with her great love, Alan Munro, a dashing and handsome test pilot whose skills got him the most dangerous jobs.

Life with Alan was great fun – but not always. One evening he called at St Hilda's, telling Donald he had got the loan of a two-seater Miles Whitney Straight in which they could fly to Paris for the weekend. Setting off from Croydon, Munro went due east over Canterbury until she suggested they turn right. Eventually they landed at Abbeville, short of fuel, then on, or so they thought, to Orly. But they fetched up at a military airfield and were put in the guardroom for the night. Donald, still recovering from airsickness and French prison fare, returned by sea.

After three years of courtship (Alan's father would not let them marry until his son had got all his professional qualifications), they tied the knot on the outbreak of the Second World War. Tragedy struck twice, firstly, with the loss of premature twins, and then in 1941 Alan was killed on active service, crashing while trying to sort out the problems of the Miles Magister training aircraft. Munro was two months pregnant.

Life with the in-laws was not easy and she took a job as a typist in the Ministry of Aircraft Production. She was assigned to Sir Robert Watson-Watt, the great radar king. Together they worked all hours through the war – so much so that she was reputed, incorrectly, to be Watson-Watt's mistress.

At the end of the war, Munro was successful in the Direct Entry Principal interview for the post-war Civil Service (only 50 were appointed) and was posted to the newly created Ministry of Civil Aviation. Initially required to rationalise the future of the country's 200-odd small airfields, she was soon sent to the international side of the department to help negotiate the UK's bilateral agreements.

Typical of her forthright and unconventional approach to international civil aviation was the opening of the first post-war talks with the new Italy. The Italians were led by General Abbriata, a former Fascist Air Force general. "What rank did you hold in the war, Mrs Munro?" he started, patronisingly. "General, I held no rank but I was on the right side," she replied. This caused even more joy in the Italian than the British camp.

Her negotiating successes – for BOAC, BEA and the independent airlines – were legion. Cigar-smoking and outrageous, she dealt, among others, with the Americans, the Canadians, the Australians, the French and the Indians.

Rights from Tokyo to San Francisco were vital to BOAC's Round the World service, and she thought she had blown it. Having invited the Japanese delegation to a Sunday lunch at her house in Leatherhead she was incensed to see one of her guests picking up her beloved Shitzou by the tail and waving it around. End of party, departure of the Japanese – for good, she feared. But on the Monday morning the Japanese ambassador craved an audience with the Foreign Secretary and announced that His Imperial Majesty was ready to concede the required rights without Japan Airlines getting what it wanted in return – great victory.

After 10 years she was shifted (to test her for higher things) to Railways in the Ministry of Transport – always an ultra-hot seat. This was long before privatisation but the issues of finance, the battles with the Treasury and the troubles with the unions were as always.

In 1964, at the age of 50, Munro, having been appointed CBE suddenly got an invitation to take over as High Mistress of her old school – St Paul's Girls'. Fed up with ministerial incompetence and what Bagehot calls the "rubbish of office", and sorely in need of a new challenge, she accepted and moved into the High Mistress's house in Hammersmith.

Her move was not without its problems. Almost the whole staff of St Paul's gave her the cold shoulder. Who was this parvenue with a Third in PPE? It was years before she was accepted in that intelligentsia hothouse, the Headmistresses' Conference.

The most striking part of the change, she used to say, was its loneliness. Instead of being able to turn to a raft of colleagues for advice she had to do it all herself, as well as reform the school. When a prominent girl was found in a cafe in Hammersmith at 3am, drugged to the world, it was Alison who had to cope with the newspapers.

Her tongue could be sharp. When a former colleague from the Ministry took his new wife, aged 22, to dinner at Hammersmith she was greeted by "and what makes you think he's going to be faithful to you?" This was mirrored by her thank-you many years later to her successor, Heather Brigstocke, who by this time had been made a baroness and gave her lunch in the Lords. "I don't know why you're here," said Munro, "it should be me". Many of her pupils would have agreed with her.

She was an unconventional but highly successful High Mistress. She won the love and respect of the girls – a new broom, teaching them things like how to read the then large Times on the tube and how to deal with importunate boyfriends. She restored the school's academic standards and many a girl owes their success in life to Munro's ability to spot potential, often despite poor O- and A-levels.

"Despite her lack of formal training for the job, Alison Munro went on to be one of the most admired headmistresses of her day," a former pupil, Valerie Hudson, remembers. "Admired by, as much as anyone, the pupils themselves, who were constantly astonished and impressed by her formidable talent at understanding and knowing each and every girl in the school – she said goodbye, by name, to every single one of them in the 500-strong school at the last assembly of each term. Mrs Munro's good opinion meant a very great deal to all the girls; words of praise or encouragement would be treasured for a lifetime."

In her so-called retirement Munro never stopped. She became Chair of the Merton, Sutton and Wandsworth Health Authority, then Chair of the Chichester Authority after she moved permanently to her beloved West Wittering, on the Sussex coast, and her boat. She was a valued Board member of British European Airways from 1966 to 1973 and served on numerous health and education bodies. She became Commodore of the local sailing club where she made committee meetings tolerable by deleting "Any Other Business".

In 2003 she suffered a series of strokes and was confined to a wheelchair. But her mind remained as sharp as ever. Even the wheelchair was a negotiating weapon – as those who travelled with her on a QE2 cruise will remember.

In her final years she took much pleasure in arranging and rearranging her memorial service in Chichester Cathedral. She will be missed by a wide circle of friends, former colleagues and pupils, who will remember her for her indomitable spirit, her fighting qualities and her many achievements.

Patrick Shovelton

Dame Alison Munro, civil servant and headteacher: born Liskeard, Cornwall 12 February 1914; staff, Ministry of Aircraft Production 1942-45; Principal, Ministry of Civil Aviation 1945-49, Assistant Secretary 1949-58; Under-Secretary, Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation 1958-60; Under-Secretary, Ministry of Aviation 1960; CBE 1964, DBE 1985; High Mistress, St Pauls' Girl's School 1964-74; Chairman, Merton, Sutton and Wandsworth Area Health Authority 1974-82; married 1939 Alan Munro (died 1941; one son); died West Wittering, West Sussex 2 September 2008.