Else Kirkaldy, a former secretary to Winston Churchill, celebrated her 100th birthday yesterday.

Mrs Kirkaldy marked the occasion with her family and friends at Dauntsey House Nursing Home in West Lavington, where she has lived since 2005.

Both Mrs Kirkaldy’s parents were Norwegian but they moved to England to find employment and she was born in London.

Her first memories including hiding in the cellar in London during Zeppelin raids and the celebrations at the end of World War One.

As a young woman in the 1930s she was employed for a time as one of the secretaries to MP Winston Churchill. This was before he became Prime Minister.

She worked for him at his London home and at his country house at Chartwell in Kent. and he dictated his books to her.

Mrs Kirkaldy said: “It was a great honour to work for Winston Churchill. He treated even juniors like myself as family.”

Mrs Kirkaldy also worked at Conservative Party headquarters with MPs including R.A. Butler and Duncan Sandys.

Later she worked as a secretary at the BBC along with such presenters as Richard Dimbleby, Alva Liddell and Kenneth Wolstenhome.

In World War Two Mrs Kirkaldy became a Land Girl and later gained a commission in the WRAF where she was a PE instructor. She was based in London and Morecambe and assisted in Denmark at the end of the war.

She married her husband Jack (Sam to his army friends), an officer in the Royal Artillery.

They had walked out together for a while in the 1930s but had lost touch when he went to India. By chance she happened to see his name in a list of wounded in North Africa in The Times in 1941. They started a correspondence and he proposed by letter in 1946.

They agreed to meet at the Savoy in London for breakfast and got married by special licence at Caxton Hall register office two days later.

As an army wife she followed her husband all over the world, living in India during partition, Burma, Germany, Manchester, the North East and Hampshire before retiring to West Lavington in 1963.

Lt Col Kirkaldy, a founder member of the Wiltshire Trust for Nature Conservation, died in 1974.

Mrs Kirkaldy, who moved to Urchfont in 1979, was active in many local organisations including the WI, the Mother’s Union and local Conservative associations.

Her son, John, lives near Exeter and works for the Open University. He is a former Kennet district councillor for the Woodborough ward. Her daughter, Sue, owned and ran the sandwich shop, Fax-a-Snack in Devizes until her death from cancer in 2005.

Mrs Kirkaldy has four grandchildren and three great grandchildren.

Her main interests have been music and reading and, until recently, was a regular attender at concerts, especially at Urchfont Manor.