“No one wanted to work at the back, because as soon as the plane took off, everyone would start smoking,” says Linda Morrison as she recalls the hazy rows at the rear of a BOAC 747. “The no-smoking sign would go off and you’d have people sat in the non-smoking cabin pop back for a cigarette.”

Linda Morrison – nee Winterbourne – joined British Overseas Airways Corporation, BA’s post-Second World War forerunner, in 1970, at the age of 16. By 1974 she was a stewardess on one of the airline’s jumbo jets, covering much of the globe during an era often referred to as the golden age of flying. “In first class, the roast beef would be brought out on a trolley and carved in front of the passengers,” she…