To mark our anniversary, we have invited 50 Catholics to choose a person from the past 175 years whose life has been a personal inspiration to them and an example of their faith at its best Elizabeth Anscombe belonged to an extraordinary generation of female thinkers at Oxford during the Second World War. She, Philippa Foot, Iris Murdoch, Mary Midgley and Mary Warnock all found themselves at odds with what Midgley called “the brash, unreal style of philosophising” then prevalent there. All, in Midgley’s phrase, “came to think out alternatives”. Even in this company, Anscombe stood out. She cut her hair short, wore trousers, smoked cigars, affected a monocle. The mother of seven children, she could work amid domestic chaos. She once lectured on the philosophy