Jenifer Hart

Jenifer Hart (; 31 January 1914 – 19 March 2005) was an English senior civil servant, historian and academic. In later life she was accused of having formerly been a spy for the Soviet Union, a claim she denied. Biography Jenifer Fischer Williams was the third of the five daughters of (Eleanor) Marjorie Hay (née Murray, 1880–1961), a descendant of John Murray, third Duke of Atholl, and John Fischer Williams, a barrister. Her father worked for a time in France where Hart received her early education at the Lycée Molière and Cours Fénelon in Paris. She later attended Downe House School, Newbury. In 1932, she entered Somerville College, Oxford where she studied history, graduating with a first class degree in 1935. Her sister was Judith Hubback. In 1933, she joined the Communist Party of Great Britain. Three years later she joined the Civil Service, after achieving better marks in the examinations than any woman had previously done (it still being unusual for a woman even to aspire to a career in the Civil Service). She became private secretary to the Permanent Under-Secretary at the Home Office, Sir Alexander Maxwell. She married the legal philosopher Herbert Hart in 1941, and resigned from the Civil Service in 1945 when he became a Fellow of New College, Oxford. She later became a research fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford, and a Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford, where she remained until 1981; she admitted her disappointment at not having become Principal. Her pupils included Rose Dugdale. Hart was for a time a university representative on Oxford City Council. Her husband became Principal of Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1973.