Thirsty for love and recognition Trench operates with such single-mindedness that she leaves a trail as much of fury as

Thirsty for love and recognition, Trench operates with such single-mindedness that she leaves a trail as much of fury as of fondness.She has left her Bosnian schools in the hands of Croat, American and English teachers and, with a Swiss charity, is setting up youth centres in Mostar. This spring she dragooned children in west Mostar into clearing out a shelled nursery school, and in May she drove over with a lorry-load of computers, hi-fi equipment and disco lights Her British colleagues were bewildered. "People keep saying to me 'Why do you bother when it could all be shelled again?' I find that extraordinary. Surely one should do something for these children even if they might all be dead tomorrow."It is partly exasperation with grown-up common sense that has made her turn for support to children. In the past year, Trench has visited more than 50 schools in this country and America, and they have funded her work. "At day-schools," she explains, "I simply give them a list of things I need to take out on my next trip and tell them to get on with it At boarding-schools, I ask them to raise money.

At Benenden I simply said to the children: 'The pocket money you would spend in two days - why not give it to me for the children in Bosnia?' In one month touring schools in America I raised pounds 30,000."St Lawrence College, Ramsgate, has just raised pounds 5,000 for Trench. Its chaplain, David Blackwell, says that he has never seen anyone have such an effect on the children: "She electrifies them." At Christ's Hospital, the effect is similar. As the children gather about her after chapel she appears part Superwoman, part St Trinian's schoolgirl marvelling coolly at the cheapness of Bosnian vodka and cigarettes; one moment describing how she has watched children in Mostar eating rats, the next regaling children with tales of her own inglorious school career "Hang on in there," she tells a truculent sixth former. "In two years' time I'll take you to Bosnia with me."But to the older onlooker it seems questionable whether Trench will still be making trips to Bosnia by the time the sixth-former leaves school. After three-and-a-half years of Bosnia, and 35 years of driven philanthropy, the strain is beginning to show. Before talking in Christ's Hospital Chapel, she was retching over the headmaster's loo with nerves Crowds terrify her.

Outside a supermarket recently she found herself cowering on the ground in terror after a car backfired. She suffers from panic attacks if anyone near pulls out a white handkerchief (Serb soldiers once stuffed one in her mouth to stop her screaming when she was detained in Srebrenica) She eats too little and drinks too much. "I've been known to drink border guards under the table," she says It is not difficult to imagine. Most worryingly of all, she persists in a blind belief that she is indestructible. If shell shock destroyed some of the men she looked after in the Sixties, might it not destroy her too?"Me?""Yes.""I won't be destroyed because my God won't allow it. As long as I am using my gifts in the right way, my God will look after me."Only one thing, she says, will stop her.