Theresa Bubbear

Every year one of these requests comes in and every year I think I’ll wait until I have time to write a proper update. Now, as I’m about to retire, I thought it might be time to provide an update on all the years since I left school in 1980!

I went straight from school to Girton College Cambridge, where I spent three happy years (plus a year abroad) studying French and Russian. I had always planned to be a teacher and had secured a place to do a PGCE after graduation, but then the university careers service suggested that diplomacy might be a good fit for me. I didn’t believe that, but everyone I knew was taking the civil service entrance exams so I went along too (very reluctantly), and joined the Foreign Office just a few months after I graduated.   

I’m still there, 44 years later, having had a fascinating career which took me to the Soviet Union in its dying days in the late 80s, South Africa as Mandela came out of prison in the early 90s, Finland as it joined the EU in the mid-90s, then back to South Africa in 2004, and on to Hungary in 2011. After that I became British Ambassador first to Estonia in 2016, and then to Finland in 2021. Along the way I have learned Finnish and Hungarian, as well as some Estonian and Spanish, met some wonderful people, and witnessed some incredible events (including, most recently, Finland’s entry into NATO, which I would have said was impossible even when I took up my post three years ago).   

I met my husband Alan, a fellow diplomat, in Moscow in 1987 and we have three daughters. Katharine is an actor (apologies to anyone offended by her recent slurping for Pot Noodle!) and also works in the libraries in Gloucester City and Cheltenham Ladies’ College. Her twin sister Natalie is Head of English at Epsom College. Jenny is a medical negligence lawyer in Taunton. We are looking forward to spending lots of time with them when we return home this autumn and to being good grandparents to Natalie’s new daughter, our first grandchild.

My younger sisters Rosie and Joy were also at BHS. Rosie (MacQuarrie, née Allen) has retired from a long career in midwifery and health visiting, and lives in Scotland.  She and her husband have two sons and two daughters, and she keeps in regular contact with her BHS friends. Joy is a child and adolescent mental health nurse, living and working in Cumbria with her two daughters. Between us we have many happy memories of BHS (mostly about the idiosyncrasies and catchphrases of various teachers, particularly Miss Scott!).   

I love reading all the OG news and I’m really sorry it’s taken me so long to get round to contributing!

- Theresa Bubbear (née Allen, BHS alumna 1971-1980)