Dr Helen Godwin, mother to Peter and Georgina has died in London yesterday, March 16th 2018. She was 92.
The family announced that there will be memorials for her – in London and Harare – in a few months.

“She has lived a long and surprising life. As a girl in Kent, she watched the Battle of Britain in the skies overhead. As a rating in the Royal Navy, stationed in Dover, she was frequently under shellfire from the German “big guns” at Calais. As a doctor in Zimbabwe, she has run leper colonies and tuberculosis hospitals; she has vaccinated thousands, saved second twins, held the hands of patients dying of a new disease called AIDS, even as others shrank from them.
She has lived through a guerrilla war, seen her oldest daughter killed in it. In her old age, she has felt her heart break again. The health-care system she dedicated her life to building lies shattered. She has lost her house and her savings and her friends and her dogs. And she has watched her husband die a difficult death. Now she is determined that death will not cheat her.”

Excerpt From: Peter Godwin. “The Fear.”