Her son, John Redgrave, said she had been "so strong" with everything she had done. "The school was built up from nothing and it's huge now. "She was quite a presence, and everybody knew it.

From 1938, when he starred in Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes, her father Sir Michael Redgrave was also a major star in Britain. "And the truth is it went to his head a little at times," she says.