Francelle Bradford White was educated at the French Lycée in London, and clearly remembers growing up among friends who had lost grandparents during the Second World War in Poland, Hungary and France. Many of her schoolmates’ parents had lived in Nazi-occupied Europe.
She first learnt about her mother’s exploits in the French resistance when she was 6 years old and subsequently spent much of her childhood listening to her mother, grandmother, uncle and their friends talk about their wartime memories.
Between 1973 and 1992 Francelle worked for several hotel chains including the Westbury hotel in Bond street before setting up her own business the Hotel Marketing Company in 1994. Simultaneously Francelle spent many years voluntarily fundraising for the Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths ( Cot Death research and support) helping them, through her own endeavours, raise several hundreds of thousands of pounds.