Mrs. Miniver

Sketches of Mrs. Miniver, a typical Englishwoman, reveal her good nature and generosity

Jan Struther was the pen name of Joyce Anstruther, later Joyce Maxtone Graham and finally Joyce Placzek (June 6, 1901 – July 20, 1953), an English writer remembered for her character Mrs. Miniver and a number of hymns, such as "Lord of All Hopefulness".

She was the daughter of Henry Torrens Anstruther and spent her childhood in Whitchurch in Buckinghamshire, England. An unhappy marriage to Anthony Maxtone Graham led to an affair with Adolf Placzek, a Viennese art historian 12 years her junior. After emigrating to the United States, the pair married in 1948.

In the 1940s Struther was a frequent guest panelist on the popular American radio quiz show Information Please, where she provided a warm and witty presence. She was one of the few women panelists to appear repeatedly on the program. In a possibly apocryphal story by fellow panelist Oscar Levant, Struther's appearances on the show stopped abruptly after she answered a question by referring to Agatha Christie's book Ten Little Niggers, which was the original British title of the book Ten Little Indians (later retitled And Then There Were None). Struther was supposedly so hurt and surprised by the backlash to her reference that she refused to appear on the show again. As well as the creation of the character Mrs Miniver in a fortnightly column in The Times, Struther is remembered for her hymns for children, including "Lord of All Hopefulness", "When a Knight Won His Spurs" and "Daisies are Our Silver". These resulted from an approach by Canon Percy Dearmer of Westminster Abbey, who in 1931 was commissioned by Oxford University Press to compile a collection of hymns. Ironically, Struther herself was an agnostic, and an unenthusiastic church-goer.

Struther is the subject of a biography, The Real Mrs. Miniver, written by her granddaughter, Ysenda Maxtone Graham. ISBN 0-7195-5541-8

She is the great-aunt of Ian Maxtone Graham, former co-executive producer of The Simpsons.