{{Short description|British educator}} {{Use British English|date=June 2025}} {{Use dmy dates|date=June 2025}} '''Elizabeth Leila Millicent "Sally" Chilver''' (née Graves; 3 August 1914 – 3 July 2014) was principal of Bedford College, University of London from 1964 to 1971 and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford from 1971 to 1979.<ref name="RHC">{{Cite book|editor=J Mordaunt Crook|title=Bedford College – Memories of 150 years|year=2001|publisher=RHC University of London|location=Royal Holloway College, Englefield Green, Surrey|isbn= 978-0902194427}}</ref>
==Background== The only daughter of Philip Perceval Graves and his wife Millicent,<ref name ="WW">[http://www.ukwhoswho.com/view/article/oupww/whoswho/U10821 ''CHILVER, Elizabeth Millicent, (Mrs R C Chilver)'', Who's Who 2012, A & C Black, 2012; online edn, Oxford University Press, December 2011]. Retrieved 29 May 2012.</ref> Elizabeth Chilver was educated at Benenden School and Somerville College, Oxford,<ref name="AIM25">[http://www.aim25.ac.uk/cgi-bin/vcdf/detail?coll_id=2823&inst_id=1 Archives in London and the M25 area (AIM25) including Higher Education in London] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130624182958/http://www.aim25.ac.uk/cgi-bin/vcdf/detail?coll_id=2823&inst_id=1 |date=24 June 2013 }}, 29 May 2012</ref> where she was a close friend of Inez Pearn (later to become a novelist and marry Stephen Spender and subsequently – following respective divorces – Charles Madge).<ref name="Vicky Randall, Afterword">{{cite book|author=Elizabeth Lake|title=Spanish Portrait|year=2019|publisher=The Clapton Press, London|isbn=978-1-9996543-2-0|page=226}}</ref> She was an historian, political scientist and anthropologist.<ref name ="Higher">''Higher'' magazine, Royal Holloway & Bedford College, Issue 20, December 2014</ref>
==Career== Chilver was a journalist from 1937 to 1939. During the Second World War she served as a temporary Civil Servant, and after it returned to journalism, writing for the ''Daily News'' (1945–47). From 1948 to 1957 she was a temporary principal and secretary of the Social Science Research Council and the Economic Research Committee of the Colonial Office. She became a director of University of London's Institute of Commonwealth Studies from 1957 to 1961 and was then a senior researcher there from 1961 to 1964, when she became Principal of Bedford College before in 1971 becoming Principal of Lady Margaret Hall.<ref name="AIM25"/> She established Bedford as a co-educational college in 1965.
In 1995 and 1996 various Festschrift publications appeared to celebrate her work, especially in the field of Cameroon Studies where she was known as "Mama for Story".<ref>[http://www.mambila.info/Chilver/index.html Online: 'Mama for Story' and Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford (JASO) Voume<!--not a typo--> 26, No.1 July 1995.]</ref> In Cameroon she worked closely and published with Phyllis Kaberry.<ref name ="Higher"/>
==Personal life== In 1937, she married Richard Clementson Chilver (died 1985),<ref name ="WW"/> a civil servant.<ref>[http://www.ukwhoswho.com/view/article/oupww/whowaswho/U162874 "CHILVER, Richard Clementson profile], ''Who Was Who'', A & C Black, 1920–2008; online edition, Oxford University Press, December 2007. Retrieved 30 May 2012.</ref> She was a niece of Robert Graves and a friend of Inez Holden, who did research into the archives of the Baptist Mission to West Africa for which Chilver made payment arrangements.<ref name ="Higher"/>
==See also== * Royal Holloway College
==References== {{Reflist}}
{{S-start}} {{s-aca}} {{succession box |title=Principal<br/>Bedford College<br/>University of London |years = 1964–71 |before=Norah Lillian Penston |after=John Nicholson Black}} {{succession box |title=Principal of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford |years=1971–79 |before=Lucy Sutherland |after=Duncan Stewart }} {{S-end}} {{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chilver, Elizabeth Millicent}} Category:1914 births Category:2014 deaths Category:Alumni of Somerville College, Oxford Category:People educated at Benenden School Category:People associated with Bedford College, London Category:Place of birth missing Category:Principals of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford Category:Fellows of Somerville College, Oxford Category:Graves family