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Janet Sondheimer (1923-2007) was Honorary Archivist at Westfield College and she published the centenary history of Westfield entitled Castle Adamant in Hampstead in 1983. She had a wide-ranging knowledge of the history of women's education.

She was born in Beckenham, Kent, attended high school in both Bromley and Truro to where she was evacuated. From 1941-44, she read history at Girton College, Cambridge, where she achieved a first-class degree. She was awarded the Tomkinson minor scholarship and won several prizes. She went on to complete a the Cambridge Teaching Certificate in 1945, and completed her PhD on the early Carolingian aristocracy.

Sondheimer devoted most of her life to education, particularly women's education. In 1968, she joined the council of the Girls' Public Day School Trust, and continued to support that organisation until her retirement in 2002. She also supervised history students in Cambridge.

Throughout her career, Sondheimer was a language and history teacher, a tutor for the Open University, a writer, a translator of books from French and German, and the Honorary Archivist at Westfield College.

Sondheimer's history of Westfield College is held in the Archives at Queen Mary, University of London. It provides a detailed and well-researched account of the College based on materials held in the College Archives.