Doreen Warriner

Memorial plaque to Warriner in Prague (unveiled in April 2019)^[1]

Doreen Agnes Rosemary Julia Warriner OBE (16 March 1904 – 17 December 1972) was a development economist born in Long Compton, Warwickshire, England (now in Stratford-on-Avon district). She is known chiefly for her role in rescuing European refugees just before World War II.^[2][3][4]

Upbringing and postings[]

Warriner's parents were Henry Arthur Warriner (1859–1927), a land agent for Weston Park, Long Compton, and his wife Henrietta Beatrice (1876–1953), daughter of Thomas McNulty, a Church of England clergyman of a slum parish in the Staffordshire Black Country, who had left Ireland.

Warriner was educated at Malvern Girls' College, then at St Hugh's College, Oxford, where she obtained a first in PPE. After a period of postgraduate study at London School of Economics, she went on to receive a doctorate from Somerville College, Oxford in 1931, as a Mary Somerville Research Fellow since 1928. She returned to academic life in 1947–1961 at the University of London's UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies.

Rescue operations[]

In December 1938, Warriner started work in Prague, representing the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia (BCRC). However, her active role in rescuing refugees alerted the Gestapo and she left Prague on 22 April 1939. She worked for the Minister of Economic Warfare in Britain and Egypt and in 1944–1946 headed the food-supply division of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration's Yugoslavian mission.

Britain awarded her an OBE (Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) in 1942.

Doreen Warriner died on 17 December 1972 after suffering a stroke.^[5]

Selected publications[]

• Economic Problems of Peasant Farming (1939)
• Food and Farming in Postwar Europe (1943)
• Land and Poverty in the Middle East (1948)
• First report on progress in land reform compiled for the United Nations (1954)
• Land Reform in Principle and Practice (1969)^[2]

References[]

Further reading[]

• Chadwick, William (2010). The Rescue of the Prague Refugees 1938–39. Troubador Publishing. ISBN 978-1-84876-504-7.
• "Warriner, Doreen Agnes Rosemary Julia". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/65817. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)