A Child Refugee

The circumstances that shaped Dame Stephanie’s life were established early and remembered only in part. Flittering recollections of Vienna, her family’s townhouse perched at the top of a hill in the quiet suburb of Perchtoldsdorf. More sharply recalled is the dismissal of her Jewish father, Arnold Buchthal, from his seat as a district court judge, followed by a restless pattern of relocation in no fewer than seven countries, a troubling testament to the destabilising force of the Anschluss. The steadily encroaching threat of the National Socialist regime, which had remained largely abstract to Stephanie, came into focus in July 1939. Then only five, and accompanied by her older sister Renate, she boarded one of the railway convoys bound for London, leaving behind Nazi-occupied Central Europe as part of the Kindertransport programme. The train carried around 1,000 of the 10,000 children who left their homes and families to seek refuge in Great Britain. The six-hundred-mile journey would mark the beginning of an entirely new life. Reflecting on this experience in her memoir, Stephanie would acknowledge the kindness and quiet courage of relative strangers, who had intervened to spare her from persecution, and she was determined to repay this generosity by vowing to make her life “one that had been worth saving”.

Upon their arrival into the UK, the two sisters would be placed under the care of their foster parents, Guy and Ruby Smith. Whilst never legally adopted, Stephanie became acutely attached to the Smiths, whom she affectionately referred to as ‘uncle’ and ‘auntie’. Stephanie quickly adjusted to her newly improvised family unit and found, in them, for perhaps the first time “unconditional acceptance”. At school, she excelled in mathematics and was awarded a scholarship to a fee-paying, selective school in Lichfield, before later transferring to join her sister at Oswestry Girls High School. By this time, Stephanie’s mother had secured safe passage to England and Renate had returned to her care. The sisters’ shared schooling permitted a limited return to routine, offering relative continuity after years defined by displacement. In 1951, Stephanie and her mother resolved to become British citizens. Born Vera Buchtal, the adoption of the surname ‘Brook’, together with Stephanie’s increasing use of her middle name as her first, marked a conscious reconfiguration of identity. Britain was not a place of temporary refuge, but her permanent home.

Early Career

At the age of eighteen, Stephanie Brook found employment at the Post Office Research Station in Dollis Hill. While the daily routine at the Post Office could be prosaic, the station possessed a singular distinction - its staff, under the direction of the engineer Tommy Flowers, were instrumental in the construction of Colossus Mk I, among the first semi-programmable computers, deployed at Bletchley Park to decipher the German Lorenz cipher during the Second World War. It was here that Stephanie developed her love of computing and programming. Despite encountering repeated resistance from her superiors, she was eventually promoted and, in a lateral move, transferred to a new division led by Flowers himself. There, work began on ERNIE (Electronic Random Number Indicator Equipment), a pioneering electronic system designed to generate random numbers for the Premium Bonds scheme.

This period also marked another significant turning point. Stephanie met her future husband, Derek, while they were both working at the Post Office Research Station, and after what she later described as an “epic courtship” lasting six years, the two decided to marry. Determined that her professional life should not be defined by her marriage and unwilling to allow it to become a subject of discussion within the workplace, Stephanie chose to leave her post, moving instead to Computer Developments Limited (CDL). Whilst she found a greater sense of camaraderie in her new team, she still could not shake the unnerving sense that progression would be constrained by the prevailing attitudes toward women. One particular meeting, in which her suggestions had been abruptly rebuked by a male colleague, finally galvanised her to make a change. If she had her own ideas, she would have to implement them herself. This would provide the impetus to found her own company, Freelance Programmers in 1962.

A Groundbreaking Entrepreneur

Freelance Programmers would recruit exclusively women, whose professional development had been stymied by the expectations of marriage and child-rearing. What is more, this team of freelance, female employees would work remotely, circumventing many of the structural barriers that had limited women’s employment. Stephanie sent out a flurry of letters, attempting to engage prospective clients, but was met with stoney silence. It was then that Derek suggested that people’s reservations might lie with the signature at the bottom of the page, prompting Stephanie to adopt the name ‘Steve Shirley’. This new approach proved successful and was followed by a steady flow of incoming calls. The company would grow from a modest kitchen-table operation into a network of skilled freelancers, working on major projects for Birds Eye, Esso and even the Council of the Stock Exchange, although ironically women were not yet permitted to work for the latter organisation. Having weathered the economic storm of the early 1970s, Freelance Programmers’ turnover surpassed £1 million at the end of the decade. By this time, Stephanie’s achievements had become impossible to ignore and in 1980 she was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE). She would later recall that in this moment, she finally felt that she was “no longer an outsider”. The company would be eventually valued at a staggering £3 billion in 2000, the same year that she was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE).

A Passionate Philanthropist

Behind the scenes, Stephanie’s personal life had been fraught with challenges. In 1963, she and Derek had welcomed a baby boy called Giles. Initially placid, sweet and unassuming, overtime his behaviour deteriorated and he was diagnosed with a severe form of autism at the age of two. Stephanie and Derek worked tirelessly to accommodate his needs, exhausted by the limited understanding of autism and the absence of meaningful support available. When caring for Giles at home was no longer possible, he was moved to a psychiatric hospital where he spent eleven difficult years.

In the early 1990s, as Stephanie withdrew from her professional roles, she felt compelled to help other families in similar positions manage the challenges associated with caring for children with autism, and indeed this would come to define much of her philanthropic work. Determined that Giles would not live his entire life in a hospital environment, she set up Kingwood, a residential home for autistic people, and, following his tragic death in 1998, she founded Prior’s Court, a residential school designed to provide specialised education and care for young people with autism.

Remarkably, The Shirley Foundation, which was active between 1986 and 2018, donated nearly £70 million to over one hundred projects with strategic impact in the field of autism. Following this, Stephanie turned her attention to Autistica, a charity she set up to advance research, services, and understanding for autistic people and their families. In the Queen’s 2017 Birthday Honours, Dame Stephanie was appointed one of 65 members of the Companions of Honour (CH), in recognition of her significant philanthropic endeavours.

An Inspired Collector

Dame Stephanie was particularly proud of the collection of more than 300 works of modern and contemporary art which she acquired for Prior’s Court. Paintings, sculptures, and a variety of applied arts populated spaces around the school and grounds, fulfilling her belief that art - alongside being decorative and sometimes educational - had enormous therapeutic value, particularly for autistic children, who learn visually, not aurally. She had been struck by the dim, institutional interiors of the subnormality hospital in which Giles had once been housed, an environment which offered little in the way of warmth or stimulation. Prior’s Court would consciously break with this model, orientating the space around light, colour and the visual arts. This philosophy would continue to inform the school‘s development and in 2025 the Piper Arts Centre was opened. This purpose-built facility would provide the materials and instruction required for students to pursue their own creative interests.

Stephanie’s approach to collecting was neither systematic nor theoretical, but intuitive and deeply personal. It is perhaps no coincidence that many of the artists represented in her own collection belong to the same generation that had been similarly touched, in one way or another, by the lived repercussions of the Second World War. Elizabeth Frink’s childhood had been shaped by the constant presence of conflict and aerial bombardment, having grown up on a Suffolk military airfield. Other artists such as Ivon Hitchens had been forced to relocate to the English countryside, following the bombing of his home during the Blitz. Some stories present an even starker parallel to Stephanie’s own life. Dame Lucie Rie was a Viennese, Jewish ceramist who had emigrated following the Nazi annexation of Austria. Rie would settle permanently in London and pushed against the established parameters within her own artistic discipline, experimenting with new materials and firing techniques. In short, Rie, much like Shirley, knew what it meant to begin a new life all over again.

A Lasting Legacy

Dame Stephanie Shirley’s life stands as a powerful testament to what is achievable through persistence and resilience, even amongst the most arduous of circumstances. She resisted pervasive attitudes of misogyny and social stigmatism that had previously limited the potential of the female workforce, all the while battling her own private grief and displacement. Stephanie likened her mission to a “crusade”, and indeed she would leverage her knowledge of technology, generosity and the arts to broaden the horizons for those without the material means or recourse to advocate for themselves.

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