There’s a new chance to hear a Harrogate 101-year-old woman’s amazing life-story at a special event next month.

One of Harrogate’s oldest-living residents, if you missed Second World War veteran Sheila Pantin’s inspirational talk called ‘The Road to the Concentration Camps’ two years ago, this remarkable figure is doing it again.

The last time round in 2023, the remarkable Sheila’s rich life story was part of the centenary of Harrogate’s war memorial.

Still full of life and a wonderful raconteur, her talk was sold-out and saw the audience clamouring for more.

One of Harrogate’s oldest-living residents, Sheila Pantin, 101, is to give a public talk on her amazing life story. (Picture contributed)

This time around Sheila has been invited to launch a local 12-month project entitled ‘Women Winning’ marking International Women’s Day 2025.

The aim is to bring Harrogate’s inspirational women like Sheila, and others from all walks of life, to new audiences.

Born in Gargrave near Skipton, Sheila’s mother died in childbirth when she was just four-years-old.

She was brought up by her father who had served in WWI before running a bus company.

After being called up aged 17, Sheila trained to be a driver of army ambulances and staff cars.

As a Rank Sergeant with the Auxiliary Territorial Service, Sheila was posted abroad after D-Day when she followed our forces across France and Belgium into Nazi Germany where, in April 1945, she became one of the first British service women to enter a German concentration camp.

Sheila Pantin said: “The numbers of people like me who have first-hand experience of these horrors are dwindling.

"That is why it is so important for people to listen to first-hand witnesses so that they too can become witnesses.”

Famously, she also met Queen Elizabeth II during WW2 when the late monarch was Corporal Princess Elizabeth who was also serving in the ATS.

Having moved in the early 1980s to Harrogate to work at the Army Apprentices College, Sheila finally retired in 1984.

In Conversation with Sheila Pantin will take place at 2.30pm on Friday, March 7 in St Peter’s Church on Cambridge Road, whose entrance is via the side door next to Primark.

Entrance is free and no booking is required.

One of Harrogate’s oldest residents is to talk about her century of living