Diana Geddes, who has died aged 84, bluffed her way into a wartime nursing job in Burma aged 16, stowed away on planes to spend time with her soldier husband and later became a Conservative politician in London.
She was the daughter of Brigadier Charles Copley Swift, MC, who had spent his 18th birthday fighting in the Dardanelles in the first world war. Her mother, Mabyn Hester Sievewright, was a high-spirited flapper; it was an unlikely and ultimately doomed match.
With Brigadier Swift serving in India, Diana was sent to England, where she lived with various friends and relations and was taught by a series of governesses. On the outbreak of the second world war, however, she and her sister were sent back to what was considered to be the relative safety of India.
By the time the Japanese invaded Burma, Diana, then only 16, was in Maymyo, a hill station in the north of the country, without her parents — her father was away fighting and her mother had run off with a brother officer whom she later married. At the club Diana saw a notice asking for volunteer nurses for the army base hospital.
She lied about her age, invented an impressive background in medical training (in fact all she knew was school-level first aid) and had her servant run up a fake nurse’s uniform. Thus equipped, she presented herself to the adjutant, who took her on as the sister, and only European nurse, in charge of the local staff.
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The Japanese drove through Burma much faster than anyone had expected, and the hospital became a front line aid station for Commonwealth troops. As Burma was being overrun, Diana’s mother reappeared at Maymyo and decided to escape to India with her three daughters — the youngest only a baby. They travelled in a cattle truck on a goods train, and throughout the journey Diana had to nurse her mother, who was suffering from malaria and nearly died.
By 1944 the family were in western India, where Diana met John Geddes, son of Lord Geddes, formerly a British government minister under Lloyd George and ambassador to the United States. At 17, Diana was 12 years John’s junior. They were married by the bishop of Bombay and were waved away by Mahatma Gandhi, who lived next door.
Geddes, who had been wounded in north Africa, was sent to lead convoys of tanks to join the fighting in Burma. His bride would stow away on supply planes to snatch time with him. Later they crossed India together in a Jeep, Diana again resorting to a fake nurse’s uniform to conceal her identity.
The war over, money was tight, and the Geddeses moved to a ramshackle former manor house without electricity near Bristol, where John became a director of Bristol Cars and Diana took up hunting. In the early 1950s she decided to enter politics. She was elected national vice-chairman of the Young Conservatives and twice fought Bristol South, a safe Labour seat.
Having earned her spurs she had hopes of being offered a winnable Conservative seat when John became involved in a business digging artesian wells in Burma, Malaya and Singapore. For two years they were based in Rangoon before the enterprise failed.
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They then settled in London, where John went into public relations, eventually becoming director of communications at the Financial Times. Diana was elected to the Greater London Council and became Conservative leader on the Inner London Education Authority.
During this period she had her “tidy political clothes” made for her by Norma Johnson, a friend and amateur seamstress, who turned out to canvass for her in a local election; thus Norma met her future husband, John Major, who was just starting in politics in Brixton. Diana and Norma continued to correspond until recently.
In the early 1970s the Geddeses bought a holiday home in west Connemara, and after John’s death Diana settled there. She did some hunting, raised chickens and for a time bred and showed labradors. In 2004 she decided that it was too far from the dentist and the shops, and she moved to Co Meath. She became a keen racegoer, winning enough to keep her Tote account in credit. Although known for her sharp tongue, she inspired great affection, being admired for her strength of character, her iconoclasm and her sense of humour. She was always resilient in times of hardship, and in her last days she observed to her grandson that dying was “an extremely boring process”.
— The Daily Telegraph