Denise Lester

Margaret Denise Eileen Lester was born in London on 29 March 1909, the daughter of Gordon and Margaret Lester. Her mother suffered from a rare and disabling disease, which Denise inherited. Between the ages of 5 and 18 she attended boarding school at Abingdon-on-Thames, near Oxford. At the age of nineteen, she decided to take a job looking after children of an English family living on the Portuguese island of Madeira and then worked as a governess of the four children of the British Consul on the island. With the transfer of the Consul to France, Lester stayed in Madeira, doing translations for a commercial firm and working at the German school as an English teacher. It was this that first sparked her first ideas of creating an English school for Portuguese children. Although there had previously been Girl Guide groups among the expatriate British families of Portugal, while in Madeira, she started the first Girl Guides group for Portuguese girls, receiving a visit from Baden-Powell in 1931.^[1] She prepared herself, through a two-year correspondence course, to obtain a qualification in the Fröbel education system, completing this with one year studying in the United Kingdom.^[2][3]

Lester then went to work in the south of France, considered to offer a climate more favourable to her health problems, at the request of the Girl Guide movement. At the same time, she taught English at a private school. With the collapse of that school, she returned to England. She was then sent by the Guides to Lisbon, enabling her to develop her idea of an English-language school for Portuguese children.^[2][3]

After working for some time as an English teacher in a private home, Lester opened the Queen Elizabeth's School (QES) on 3 November 1935 with just 6 students, in a borrowed room and the garden at the home of Sophia and Fortunato Abecassis, with the encouragement of the then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Armindo Monteiro. In parallel with following the official Portuguese curriculum, the children were taught English. In 1936, the school was officially recognized by the Ministry of National Education. It moved to a new location in 1938 and again in 1940. During World War II, the number of students dropped considerably and Lester worked four hours per night at the British Council to cover the school's costs. She also helped raise funds for charities, and the school both served as a centre to help refugees and admitted refugee children. Between 1935 and 1945, children of 27 different nationalities attended the school. In April 1943 she received an award from the Red Cross for her work in furthering the aims of that organization. In 1947 she was made a Member of the British Empire (MBE).^[2][3][4]

In September 1949, the Portuguese government issued a law banning joint education of girls and boys. Lester was forced to consider a new change of facilities. Thanks to a donation from the British Government, she was able to take out a bank loan to build the current facilities. The current school building, at Rua Filipe Magalhães, was officially opened on 6 October 1952. The school celebrated its 25th anniversary in 1961. Sir David Eccles, the British Minister of Education attended the celebrations, together with Francisco Leite Pinto, the Portuguese Minister of Education, and the British Ambassador.^[2][3][4]