I have followed a straighter line, not taking career breaks or going part-time with motherhood, but I do relate to the way these head girls tailored their ambitions. And I wonder if the burden of early conscientiousness – surely the sign of a head girl type – means you end up too busy to see the bigger picture, or to do enough to please yourself, and so make your mark.

Frances can recognise herself in the article, although her sentiments about children – she didn’t go on to have any – do not ring as true for her as the fear of being a housewife (“I’d hate to think of myself just being at home with children while my husband was out earning the money”). She noted grimly then it was “still tough for a woman in a man’s world”, asking: “How many successful women are there in the City?” But literary ambition was already in place. “I’d like to write, but how realistic that is I don’t know.” We all thought the world had changed to fit us in as career women, and then we found that it hadn’t

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The American historian Forrest Pogue wrote of the victims that "their look, in the hands of their tormentors, was that of a hunted animal". Colonel Harry D McHugh, the commander of an American infantry regiment near Argentan, reported: "The French were rounding up collaborators, cutting their hair off and burning it in huge piles, which one could smell miles away. Also, women collaborators were forced to run the gauntlet and were really beaten." I went on to fail pretty miserably in the things I thought I was going to do’: Anna Wright, in her old place at school. Photograph: Sophia Spring for the Observer Elected to the post of vice chairman of the sixth form committee at her new school, she approved of the way such democracy prevented “the usual biased preferential treatment”. A university degree would be a way to bide time. “That should tide me over till I’m 21, which is when I can legitimately stand for parliament. As a Tory. But I realise it’s very hard for ladies to get into parliament. Look at the figures – out of 635 only 23 are women.”

The schoolgirl Frances complained about the “insulation” of convent life, but had strong apprehensions about work in the world outside. “I’m ready to leave, but it is a bit frightening to wonder where the next meal is coming from,” she said. From the viewpoint of 2015, she thinks her stint as head girl gave her a sceptical attitude to authority. “I was embarrassed by being head girl then and I still am. It set me slightly apart from my friends at school, who were all naughty.” Elsewhere some men who had volunteered to work in German factories had their heads shaved, but that was an exception. Women almost always were the first targets, because they offered the easiest and most vulnerable scapegoats, particularly for those men who had joined the resistance at the last moment. Altogether, at least 20,000 women are known to have had their heads shaved. But the true figure may well be higher, considering that some estimates put the number of French children fathered by members of the Wehrmacht as high as 80,000. Unwanted Food or Drink Products - Once supply conditions are broken, there are a number of factors outside of our control that can affect the quality of a product. Therefore perishable goods such as food and drink cannot be returned. Unfair popular bias suggests head girls are bossy and self-satisfied – and probably swots. It is no surprise to learn that Margaret Thatcher once had the title at her Grantham grammar. Nor perhaps that the wholesome Kate Winslet was head girl at her drama school. And I certainly understood, in the wake of punk, that my success at the ballot box was pretty uncool. It was a victory likely to make me more enemies than friends. This realisation was possibly the most valuable lesson that being head girl ever offered.

Churchill heard these stories of women snipers during his visit to Normandy on 12 June and wrote about them to Anthony Eden on his return. British officers, however, later became increasingly sceptical of these "latrine rumours". For reasons of hygiene and safety, personal grooming products, cosmetics or items of intimate clothing cannot be returned. The head girl who has come closest to grasping the reins of power is Joanna Gardner, who went to Pimlico School (now Pimlico Academy). This mixed comprehensive in London offered her refuge from a previous convent school, as Joanna, the daughter of Tory peer Baroness Gardner of Parkes, explained at 18: “I hated it. I had a lot of bullying. Here I’m a different person. They take you for what you are.”