Ann Elizabeth Paludan (née Murray) (1928–2014) was a British author of several books on Chinese history, sculpture and architecture.
Biography
Ann Paludan was the daughter of
Basil Murray
Basil Andrew Murray (1902–1937), was a British editor, journalist and Liberal Party politician.
Background
Murray was the second son of the scholar Gilbert Murray and Lady Mary Howard, daughter of the 9th Earl of Carlisle. He was educated a ...
. Her father was the second son of the eminent classical scholar
Gilbert Murray and his wife Lady Mary Howard, and Ann would visit her grandparents at Yatscombe, on
Boars Hill
Boars Hill is a hamlet southwest of Oxford, straddling the boundary between the civil parishes of Sunningwell and Wootton. Historically, part of Berkshire until the 1974 boundary changes transferred it to Oxfordshire.
History
The earliest kn ...
, particularly during her undergraduate years in
St Hugh's College, Oxford
St Hugh's College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford. It is located on a site on St Margaret's Road, to the north of the city centre. It was founded in 1886 by Elizabeth Wordsworth as a women's college, and accep ...
when she cycled up to Yatscombe every Sunday.
Her parents had split up when she was young and her father died in Spain when she was eight, so her visits to her grandparents gave a welcome sense of continuity.
On her mother's side she was the granddaughter of the painter
Algernon Newton
Algernon Newton (1880–1968) was a British landscape artist known as the "Canaletto of the canals".
Biography
Newton was born in Hampstead in 1880, a grandson of Henry Newton, one of the founders of the Winsor & Newton the art materials co ...
RA, of the family which founded the
Winsor and Newton
Winsor & Newton (also abbreviated W&N) is an English manufacturing company based in London that produces a wide variety of fine art products, including acrylics, oils, watercolour, gouache, brushes, canvases, papers, inks, graphite and coloured ...
paints company, and a niece of the actor
Robert Newton
Robert Guy Newton (1 June 1905 – 25 March 1956) was an English actor. Along with Errol Flynn, Newton was one of the more popular actors among the male juvenile audience of the 1940s and early 1950s, especially with British boys. Known for hi ...
.
After graduating she worked as a British diplomat,
marrying John Ernest Powell-Jones
in December 1949
and starting a life abroad in 1949.
Her son,
Sir Mark Jones, was born on 5 February 1951;
he was an art historian and museum director and has been Master of
St Cross College, Oxford
St Cross College is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Founded in 1965, St Cross is an all-graduate college with gothic and traditional-style buildings on a central site in St Giles', just south of Pusey Street. It ...
since 2011.
Janus Paludan (1920–2004), a Danish diplomat, had served as Danish Ambassador to the Congo 1962–1965 and to Brazil 1968–1972, and he and Ann married before he took up the post of Danish Ambassador to China in 1972.
They lived in
Beijing
}
Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 2 ...
until 1976, and thereafter she returned regularly to China on research trips.
He then served as Ambassador to Egypt in 1976 and to Iceland from 1977 to 1984, after which they retired to northern
Cumbria.
Ann was widowed in January 2004.
She died in late 2014.
Books
Ann Paludan researched the history of China and wrote a number of authoritative and widely cited books:
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References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Paludan, Ann
English writers
Historians of China
1928 births
2014 deaths
Alumni of St Hugh's College, Oxford
English women writers