Audrey Flanagan (née Bolton) was born in 1931 and left school at 16, but would have gone to university could her family have afforded it. Instead, she became a reporter on the , her hometown newspaper. She was a winner of the Talent Competition for journalists and was offered a job at in London. However, instead she married Maurice, whom she’d met at 14 through an inter-school debating society, and travelled the world with him.
Her daughters, Siobhan and Claire, and son, Julian, were always impressed by the ease with which Audrey adapted to such a different life from the one she’d known in a close, Roman Catholic, working-class family. She said her mother told her: “Remember, you’re no better than anyone, and no one is better than you.” That explains her social ease and why, like Maurice, she was always interested in others. That ease and curiosity also extended to encountering new cultures, which is perhaps why she was such a good journalist.
Maurice was a trainee manager with BOAC when they married. The company held a paternalistic grip on its employees and discouraged him from marrying, advising that he could probably not support a wife and family on his salary. But they did marry and were posted to Calcutta where the only entertainment they could afford was popular Indian films, of course without English subtitles. However hard up they were, Audrey dressed with style and always wore a hat and gloves to travel.
After Calcutta, they were posted to Bangkok, where Audrey’s kitchen stove was a biscuit tin on a charcoal burner in a shed. Then Nairobi, just after Siobhan was born. This was during the height of the Mau-Mau rebellion, whose violence was exaggerated by the British authorities, leading Audrey, when Maurice was on night shifts at the airport, to sleep fitfully with her baby beside her and a pot of pepper and kitchen knife on the nightstand for protection. Then Columbo, after Claire was born; Lima, where Julian was born; Abadan (Iran) where there was no available school, so Audrey home-schooled Siobhan; and Bombay/ Mumbai, which was one of the happiest times for the family.
Audrey made light work of each upheaval, leaving one household and setting up a new one. She and Maurice always formed friendships and interests beyond the British expat bubble, and their departure from each posting was mourned by staff and friends.
After Bombay, Maurice was stationed in Manchester with British Airways and Audrey worked in Press and PR for the Warrington New Town Development Corporation. The regional BBC correspondent once told Audrey that he usually ignored press releases, except hers because she always spotted and tailored a story that would interest and engage the public.
In 1977, Maurice was posted to Dubai to manage DNATA, and Audrey was appointed Press & PR Officer for Dubai’s World Trade Centre, which was then the Middle East’s tallest building. Audrey and Maurice’s world was transformed in many ways in 1984 by a phone call from Sheikh Mohammed, when the family was celebrating Christmas at its house near Warrington. His Highness tasked Maurice to start a new airline, Emirates. At the Dubai seaside villa, Maurice led the core, planning group in secret meetings and Audrey supervised the care and feeding of the intense working marathons. In the early years of Emirates, Audrey hosted dinners at the villa for pilots and cabin crew, helping to forge an esprit de corps in the fledgeling airline.
Maurice and Audrey loved Dubai and were fascinated to watch its extraordinary development. While Maurice was a visionary with a sharp business sense, he relied on Audrey, as a shrewd sounding board, and valued her insights throughout his career. Dubai became even more of a home to Audrey and Maurice when Claire and her husband, Dougie Gibbons, moved here with their two small children, whom Audrey had the pleasure of watching grow up.
Audrey was a keen, diverse reader and it was her idea, sparked by Isobel Abulhoul, that Emirates might support Dubai’s Literary Festival. She suggested it to Maurice, making a strong case for how it would widen an understanding of Dubai in the rest of the world. Speaking about Audrey’s involvement in the festival, Isobel Abulhoul said, “In 2007, Audrey suggested that I pitch the idea of the Literary Festival to Emirates Airline – and thanks to both Maurice’s and Audrey’s belief that this would be an excellent way to enrich the cultural fabric of the city, the festival was born. All of us owe a huge debt to Audrey for also championing so many charitable causes.”
She supported the Al Noor Training Centre for children with special needs, from its early years, fundraising, organising and working in the charity shop, and made lasting friendships through that work.
“Audrey was a great supporter of Al Noor, from the early 1980s onwards and the centre will always be indebted to her and Maurice for their generosity and invaluable assistance,” Ian Fairservice said, on behalf of the centre’s board of governors. “She provided wonderful encouragement and helped in so many different ways, including managing the centre’s Thrift Shop for many years,” he continued.
Audrey had a great gift for friendship, across generations, and remembered small details about everyone she knew. For someone so affectionate and tender, she bore stoically the profound loss of her husband, her younger sister Veronica, and especially of her son Julian aged 56. Her legacy is of the close, loving family she nurtured and loved to watch grow, and a network of valued friends that cherish her memory.
