F you had to select the ideal castaway for
Sue Lawley's Desert Island Discs, you could not go wrong with Toni de Laroque, who has Devoted a vast proportion of her energies to remote island life. During the 1950s, while she was working as an air stewardess for BOAC, she spied a group of tiny, coral-ringed islands 215 miles away from the southernmost tip of India as her plane was making its descent into Ceylon. These were the Maldives, then a virtually unknown destination, which Mrs de Laroque was some years later to adopt as her cause. If they are at all well-known in Britain now, it is largely thanks to her. In return for the compliment, she is affectionately called, courtesy of a Maldivian presidential decree, the Maldive Lady. |
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'Imagine me putting up a ceilling drape on my own amoung all these other glamorous and packed stands,' she recalls. 'I told my little darlings - I call all Maldivians my little darlings - about etiquette and that they were not to smoke when the Duchess arrived. When I made the introductions, they behaved so beautifully and I was so proud of them that I almost choked.'
er affection for her 'little darlings' does
not stop a persuading other countries to visit them. She runs a charity which supplies books and paper to schoolchildren (three-quarters of the population is less than 24 years old) and looks after Maldivian businessmen and their children when they are in London. Photographs of children decorate her apartment off the King's Road in London, which doubles up as her office. |
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To have become the only female western spokesman for a nation of 250,000 Muslims is an unusual occupation for someone who, aged 18, took her first tentative steps as a debutante doing the London season. But then Mrs de Larouque consistently presents a remarkable, if not eccentric, figure. One year after she had been presented to the Queen, she was learning to fly in Kenya, the country of her birth. Today, yellow-haired and bird-like she insists on putting on Maldivian national dress for her COUNTRY LIFE photograph, while at the same time hugging her dachshund, Posie. 'I think I terrified your poor photographer,' she giggles, eyes, dancing with mischief.
She is, in fact, far from terrifying; bouncy, ebullient and enormously chatty instead, and, once she puts her mind to something, unstoppable. When she first visited the Maldives properly in 1980 - marriage to a British landowner,
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'They are very independent, very gentle and are never to be underestimated,' she says, describing her adopted people. 'They have their own language, Dhivehi, and their own religion. They take care of their elderly and live in small, gossipy, village -like communities. They are also deeply superstitious, like many people who live on the sea.' But Mrs de Laroque insists that tourism has not corrupted the Maldivians. 'It has simply allowed them to prosper, and opened their eyes to the way other people live,' she says. 'They think that we do not pray enough and they disapprove of the fact that we drink.' This has not, however, prevented them from naming a cocktail after Mrs de Laroque, called naturally, the Maldive Lady. 'I feel lucky to have been accepted by them,' she says.
Should she ever be invited to share her experiences on Desert Island Discs, Mrs Laroque has already chosen two essential items: 'A knife - for opening coconuts, digging out shore clams and finding water - and mosquito repellent.'
But she could find herself a castaway with no islands to visit. |
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followed by two children, delayed her realising her ambition to discover the Maldives for some time she took it upon herself to pursue the head of tourism.
'When I found him, I only intended to stay 10 minutes, but our meeting lasted 1 1/2 hours. I was keen that more people should know about the Maldives.' 
rom that meeting she secured a promise that she could return as a guest of the Maldivians and learn more about the country. 'For three years, I went out and traveled from island to island [there are nearly 2,000 islands, of which 303 are populated and 74 are tourist resorts] and learnt to dive. Back in Britain, I gave talks and appeared on the BBC and on Woman's Hour promoting the islands.' She also secured a stand for the Maldives at the 1986 World Travel Mart at London's Olympia. She encouraged HRH the Duchess of Gloucester to visit the stand, which finally put the country firmly on the British tourist industry's map.
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The Maldives may be immune to the nasty side-effects of tourism, but they face one problem that is beyond them and the determination of their Maldive Lady; global warming. 'The islands are right at the epicenter of the warming of the water,' Mrs de Laroque explains. 'The highest elevation is a mere five metres. Within 32 years, the islands could vanish.'
One suspects that Mrs de Laroque would not remain adrift for long, however. Before long, we should surely find ourselves visiting another island paradise which had adopted a special lady of its own. 
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