Note by Professor Julian Leff:
Vera Leff was born in Edinburgh and moved to London with her parents in the 1920s. She had to leave school at 15 because her father could not afford the fees. She trained as a short-hand typist and once remarked that she could type faster than any of her employers could think. She joined a left-wing group and went to see the Hunger Marchers when they arrived, foot-sore and hungry in London. There she met Dr Sam Leff whom she later married. She wrote books on health matters with him and published novels and poetry of her own. Sam Leff joined the Socialist Medical Association in the 1940s and helped to plan the National Health Service. Vera teemed up with a Quaker, Miss Fishwick, and together they initiated the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, persuading Joseph Rotblatt, the nuclear scientist to support them. Her key role in the CND has never been acknowledged.
Books by Vera Leff:
Going Our Way a romantic novel about the Socialist Medical Association 1945
The Struggle of Mulvaney Gill 1962
Wife of the Prisoner 1964
The Willesden Story 1965 (with GH Blunden)
The Story of Tower Hamlets 1967 (with GH Blunden)
Books by Samuel and Vera Leff:
From Witchcraft to World Health 1956
The School Health Service 1959
Health and Humanity 1960
Books by Samuel Leff:
The health of the people 1950
Social medicine 1953
The search for sanity 1965