Sally Bolton is becoming the All England Club’s first female chief executive, but it was a woman who guided Wimbledon through the second world war, before being unfairly sidelined
Norah Gordon Cleather would have caused a stir entering any room in any era. She was a glamorous London socialite who mixed easily with the world’s best tennis players and the cream of Europe’s interwar royalty but, like many fairytales, hers would take a sad and unexpected twist.
Her long-forgotten name has surfaced since Sally Bolton was named as the first woman to be chief executive of the All England Club, succeeding Richard Lewis, a handover taking place in the unique circumstances of a lockdown when the championships would normally be gearing up for a start on 29 June. But Cleather can lay claim to a version of that role in similarly challenging times, 81 years ago (as Bolton is discovering while reading Cleather’s autobiography, Wimbledon Story).
Written by Kevin Mitchell
This news first appeared on https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/jun/20/wimbledon-pioneer-norah-gordon-cleather-sally-bolton-tennis under the title “New Wimbledon chief follows path of pioneer Norah Gordon Cleather”. Bolchha Nepal is not responsible or affiliated towards the opinion expressed in this news article.
