The eulogy at Terry's funeral was given by her former newsroom colleague, Roy Haynes:

Lorraine and her family would like to thank you all for coming here today from far and wide. I think Terry herself would be pleased and perhaps a little embarrassed by the enormous turnout. It’s wonderful.  

Lorraine got so many sympathy cards, letters and emails – and nearly all of them used the same word to describe Terry -- a lovely, lovely woman.

Now, I always knew that Terry was a remarkable woman, But it wasn’t until I sat down with Lorraine to look at the highlights of Terry’s life I realised just how remarkable she was.

Let me tell you about this lady we all know as Terry Roberts.  

Terry’s life spanned almost ninety incredible, tumultuous years. She was born in London but spent the first six years of her life in a little village in northern Italy. Her mum was English but  her dad was Italian.

She was christened with a much grander name:

Beatrice Giuseppina Teresa Picchi.

Terry would have been the first to admit it was a bit of a mouthful. It was Cyril, Terry’s husband-to-be, whom we can thank for simplifying that.  

Until her teenage years she was called by the diminutive BEE-CHAY.  She hated it and Cyril said: why not use your third Christian name Teresa and shorten it to Terry. And so she was known forever after as Terry.

Terry developed a severe kidney infection when she was nine. Doctors gave a terrifying prognosis: They said she’d probably have to spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair, she’d not have the strength to hold down a job, she wouldn’t be able to marry or have children.

Now all of you who knew Terry knew that was quite the wrong thing to tell her. She was having none of it. Even at that early age, she displayed that courage and zest for life that was so typical of her.

Within a year – illness or not -- she’d passed her exams and went on to Notre Dame grammar school in south London. Later, she passed her baccalaureate but the outbreak of the Second World War prevented her from going on to university.

It was about this time that Terry met a handsome young chap called Cyril whose dad had come to England from Trinidad to fight for King and Country at the start of the First World War.

As it does, romance blossomed over the school books. She helped Cyril with his French; he helped her with her maths.  

Like his dad before him, Cyril signed up to fight for King and  Country when the Second World War broke out. He was among the soldiers defending the beaches as the bulk of the British army was evacuated from Dunkirk.

Sadly Cyril was captured by the Germans and endured five very hard years in PoW camps. But Terry did not desert her handsome young man: she sent him Red Cross  parcels and, as much as wartime conditions allowed,  they exchanged letters regularly.

Terry kept those letters to her dying day.

And here’s another example of what a plucky can-do sort of woman she was.  Barely out of school, Terry joined the war effort with the Auxiliary Fire Service.  She manned a phone exchange down by the docks in east London. Right in the thick of the blitz.

Typically, Terry always used to say she was more frightened of the rats down in the docks than the Luftwaffe’s fire bombs.

When Cyril came home in 1945 they married and inevitably contributed to the baby boom of 1946 with the birth of  Lorraine.

Despite  the austerity of those post-war years, Terry was determined to enjoy life. Now get this: Terry and her  younger brother, Francesco, decided it would be a bit of a lark to cycle – yes, cycle – to Paris. On a tandem.  Extraordinary.

Terry was a great traveller. Her adopted daughter, Katie, emigrated to Australia and every other year, Terry made the long haul out there until she was well into her seventies.

What made Terry such a wonderful companion was that she had such a broad range of interests.  From jigsaw puzzles to theatre and films. From football to high opera. She followed current affairs and politics.  She was a great seamstress. She knew about food and wine and was a great cook – as I can testify.

Throughout her life Terry collected and kept friends. She loved to phone for a chat, she was a great letter writer and never forgot a birthday.

I first met Terry in the newsroom of the BBC World Service where Terry worked for twenty years.  She was a clerk on the nightshift.

It was an important job and I can tell you from personal experience she often saved the bacon of many a journalist who’d had a few too many drinks before the start of a shift. She was held in high esteem and affection. When Terry was on shift you knew you were in safe hands.  

Even while working, she cared for Cyril who suffered a stroke in his early fifties. When he died, Terry was only fifty-five. A great, great blow.  But Terry carried on.

She got herself a post-retirement job at the YMCA – the foreign students who lived there loved her, particularly the Somalis and Ethiopians because she could converse with them in Italian.  Long after, she’d cause of a bit of a stir in the street when a black or oriental face from out of the crowd would call out to her “mama!” and give her a big hug.

There are two other so very important aspects of Terry’s life I want to tell you about.

Her family. Her family meant so much to her and Lorraine recalls the very happy times they had: summer weekends down at the seaside travelling down in a convoy of ramshackle vehicles with Terry and Cyril’s wide and cosmopolitan circle of friends. Lots of really great parties where as far as I can tell it was open house at the Roberts home.

She adored her two grandsons, Dominic and Marcus.  When she and they were younger she would play football with them, she swam with them in the Med, made cakes with them.

And like her daughter Lorraine, they meant the world to her.

The other aspect of Terry’s life that impressed me was her great faith which was rock solid and vital to her whole being.

To her dying day Terry loved life and wanted to savour all the good things it had to offer.   Yes, she thought growing old was a right royal pain. But she never moaned about bad health or aches and pains.  

Even at the age of eighty-nine – even the day before her stroke – she would climb the forty-one steps to her penthouse flat, with her shopping trolley in tow, always, always refusing help. She had great integrity and a strong independent spirit. As I and all her family and friends have said, a lovely, lovely woman.

A loving wife, a loving mother, a loving grandmother, a loving friend.

Dear, dear, Terry,  we will miss you so much. You have more than  earned your place in heaven. May you rest in peace.

Terry Roberts, born September 13, 1922,  died February 9, 2012 at the Conquest Hospital in Hastings.