With the death of Lettice Ramsey on July 12th [1985], Cambridge has lost a notable character. Born on August 2, 1898, the daughter of English parents, she spent her early years under a governess in County Sligo [Ireland] where her father had an oyster farm and her talented mother (trained at the Slade) painted.

She was then sent to Bedales and from there went up to Newnham [Cambridge University] to read philosophy. In 1925 she married the brilliant mathematician and philosopher, Frank Ramsey, and they had two daughters [Jane and Sarah] before Frank tragically died in 1930 at the age of only 26 [from liver disease].

Lettice then decided on photography for a living, took a course at Regent Street Polytechnic ("one term was quite enough") and joined forces with Helen Muspratt: "She had the know-how, I had the connections."

Connections, indeed. Lettice had, or made, and a long succession of unposed, lively portraits of the intellectual and literary luminaries of the pre-war flowed from the Cambridge studio - Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf, Kathleen Raine, Victor Rothschild, J. D. Bernal, Dorothy Hodgkin, C. P. Snow, Joan Robinson and many more [including the notorious Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean and Anthony Blunt in the 1930's].

In 1937 Helen Muspratt moved to Oxford, while Lettice remained active in Cambridge - activity which included climbing the scaffolding in King's Chapel in her seventies to photograph the [stained glass], and being locked in for her pains.

Photography was only one of Lettice's pursuits. She made pottery and collages; she was a persistent and adventurous traveller; and she had that rare quality of making her recurrent parties a success by enjoying them so much herself. [She was also interested in natural history, and often recalled being kept awake at night as a child on the west coast of Ireland by the rasping call of Corncrakes - presumably abundant in those days.]

Having suffered the tragedy of Frank’s death, and the later death of her younger daughter [Sarah], it was as though she challenged life to repay the debt it owed her: and she saw to it that life paid up, right to the end.

[Lettice was survived by her elder daughter Jane, and grandchildren Stephen, Belinda and Matthew Burch].

From The Times, 30 July, 1985

When Lettice Ramsey tried to get into Cambodia she was stopped because she carried a camera and the authorities thought she was a journalist. She immediately arranged for herself another passport describing her occupation as "housewife". She got into Cambodia and took some excellent photographs there.

This incident was typical of Lettice Ramsey's approach to life. It was her originality, quick thinking and undoubted artistic flair which established her as one of Cambridge's leading photographers and which kept her at the forefront for decades.

She was born in Ireland in 1898 and was educated in this country at Bedales School and Newnham College, Cambridge. At Cambridge she read moral sciences and in her early 20s married Frank Ramsey, the brilliant King’s philosopher, who tragically died five years later.

She was left with two young daughters and very little training to equip her for a commercial career. She studied briefly at the Regent Street Polytechnic in London and then set up in business as a photographer.

She was instantly successful and rapidly became fashionable, photographing the influential and the up and coming throughout the 30s. Anthony Blunt, later to gain a knighthood only to be stripped of it for spying was among the sitters. Another was Virginia Woolf.

Lettice Ramsey took into partnership another gifted woman photographer. Helen Muspratt, whose name remained with the business until Lettice retired in 1978. Lettice Ramsey lived her entire career in Cambridge at Mortimer Road.

From the Cambridge Evening News, July 18th, 1985.