Obituaries

Intro text?

BERNICE BARTON (NÉE BANTON) (Cert Ed 1957–1959) Bernice Banton came up to Homerton College from Maris Stella Convent High School, New Brighton, and specialised in Art and Drama. She thoroughly enjoyed her two years in Cambridge and met her future husband David Barton, an Emmanuel Medic, and Mary ‘Topsy’ Hughes (Cer t Ed 1957–1959), who was to become her lifelong friend.

Her first teaching post was at Kirklands Secondary Modern School, Birkenhead, which gave her a good grounding for later work in Harlow NewTown, first at Brays Grove Secondary School and then at Netteswell Comprehensive School.

She devoted over ten years to bringing up her two sons and being a hands-on old fashioned GP’s wife in Herne Bay in Kent. Her elder son Sebastian attended Corpus Christi College for the five year medical course while her younger son Hugo went to Bristol University and studied Law. During these years she studied for an Open University BA, passing with Upper Second Class Honours, and followed this with an MA in Psychology at the University of Kent.

She then moved into Further Education and successfully taught Psychology and English at Thanet College, Broadstairs, for a number of years before being appointed Lecturer at the Open University in Psychology. She found great satisfaction in helping students with work at University level and continued until retirement. She was a keen attender of reunions at Homerton.

Dr David Barton

MIKE BIBBY 1932–2015 To say that Mike Bibby was a complex character is an understatement; both his sympathies and his antipathies were strong and freely expressed. Multi talented in sculpture, ceramics and painting, his work developed over the years into a mature, distinctive style.

He had a discerning palate and assembled an impressive wine cellar. At one point we had a disagreement over a choice of wine for a College event. Though somewhat aggrieved by his comments, I had to acknowledge that he was entirely correct in his judgment.

A generous host, he cooked an excellent meal for Jean and me when we stayed with him on a journey to Wales. He regaled us with lovely wines which led to a certain caution when driving the next day. He was a “character”, vivid in his enthusiasms, generous of spirit, occasionally cantankerous but generally benign. He was fortunate to find a supportive partnership in later life.

John Ball

I vividly remember meeting Mike for the first time at my interview back in 1973. His reddish hair and his height made an immediate impact as well as his big personality. For me, not being overly challenged in the verticality department, it was quite a surprise!

John Ball mentions Mike’s wine cellar, something Mike failed to mention at my interview. Upon being appointed, however, I soon was made aware of his extensive knowledge in this direction.At my first departmental social event I was quietly advised by Colin, the art technician, to leave my bottle of Hirondelle under a chair. I cannot recall ever having a less than superb wine in Mike’s presence.

Looking back I admired Mike’s ambition to create an Art Department that was the equal of an Art School learning environment. Everyone that he appointed was a practising artist or art historian. That balance between being a maker of art and a teacher was deemed essential and something I personally fought for right up to my own retirement. Mike led a talented group of people with a firm but kind touch.

After Mike retired, his creative work moved towards painting and an intense interest in the Worcestershire landscape. I was struck by his honesty when discussing his work and also his generosity towards me and my own painting. It was this later stage in our relationship that I treasure most. We had both slowed down, had time to take stock, and I came to fully appreciate him as a very generous and kind man. I will always remember Mike with affection.

Philip Rundall

HELEN BUNTON 1919–2015 Some time ago, Helen called me in and dictated to me what she wanted me to say on the occasion of her funeral. So what follows might be seen as the ‘authorised version’. However, we used to joke that I knew three of her secrets. Nothing exciting, just things she did not go out of her way to let people know. I am going to disclose two of those in the first line, and so, with some trepidation, I give you what might be seen as ‘very slightly revised’.

Marion Hewson Gotobed, was born in Scotton, Lincolnshire on 12th April, 1919. Her father William was a successful businessman and her mother, Kitty, worked for the Red Cross. She was raised in Downham Market, in Norfolk and educated at the Perse School for Girls in Cambridge, where she was a weekly boarder. This meant she often had to leave home at 5 am to catch the train to Cambridge. She greatly enjoyed school, and excelled in mathematics. After taking Higher School Cer tificate in 1938, she gained a place at Bedford College, which was the first institution to offer higher education to women, and was at that time a constituent college of the University of London, based in Regent’s Park. It was at Bedford that she took the chance to change her name from Marion, which she disliked, to the Helen by which we all know her.

On the outbreak of the Second World War, Bedford students were moved to Cambridge, where, under a special arrangement between the two Universities, she became a Newnham College student. She took a First in Part I of the Natural Sciences Tripos, and decided to read Physics for Part II. This made her a rare bird, one of only two women in her year to make this choice. She looked back on this period as “Not an easy time”, recalling that, with the loss of the most able lecturers to the War, the availability of good supervision was limited, and even more irksome, since only two women were reading Physics, they were always last to be allocated laboratory experiments. Nevertheless, there were some consolations to be had socially, and it was during this time that she first met her husband-to-be, in the dark room of the Cavendish Laboratory in Free School Lane. She would not confirm that it was this meeting, which contributed to her graduating with a Third….

In 1942 she spent a year at Hughes Hall in Cambridge taking a Diploma in Education. Her teaching practice was at the then Long Road Grammar School for Girls, where she recalled on many occasions being mistaken for one of the Sixth Form.

This was followed by two years at Newcastle under Lyme Girls’ School, during which time she married John Bunton, who was then serving as an RAF Officer.At the end ofthe war she taught at Bedford High School for Girls, before moving to set up a family, first in Greenford, where Christopher was born, and then in Ruislip, where John was establishing a successful career with Philips. This immediate post-war period was still a time of hardship, when the country was slowly being rebuilt and rationing was still in operation.

In 1953, Helen decided to refresh her scientific knowledge and took an MSc at University College, London. Shortly after completing this, she saw an advertisement for a senior lecturer in Physics at Homerton College. She was interviewed by the Principal, Miss Skillicorn, in Millborough House, Hampstead, which was then owned by Homerton and used as a base for teaching practice in London schools. She recalled being in competition with “three very confident men”, but she was the one who got the job. For a while this involved her commuting to and from Cambridge at weekends, until the family moved to Cambridge a year later. In 1961, Penny was born.

Helen was head of the Physics department during a time of great expansion and change in teacher education and she played a significant part in the management of this change. Science teachers have always been in short supply and to counter this she initiated a supplementary course in science for qualified teachers, who wished to become specialists in science teaching.

When the University of Cambridge refused to offer a BEd degree, Helen was involved in the negotiation to enable Homerton students to take a BEd awarded externally by the University of London. When three years later, Cambridge eventually saw the light, she was again involved in setting up the first Cambridge B.Ed., degree.

Her expertise was recognised nationally and internationally. In 1956 she was elected to a Fellowship of the Institute of Physics and in 1961 she was awarded the Walter Heinz Page Scholarship. This involved visits to universities in the USA including Princeton, Columbia, Caltech and Harvard. She enjoyed this experience immensely and, among other things, was glad to be able to enlighten her new American colleagues on the appropriate way to drink Laphroaig malt whisky (A secret she condensed to “Raw, not ruined. A splash of water is permissible, but only if it is Scottish water.”). In 1966, she was a member of the British Council Education Mission, led by Lord James, to Guyana and East and West Pakistan.

Retiring from Homerton in 1980, she was one of the influential founding members ofthe Homerton Retired Senior Members Association (the RSMs) and acted as itsTreasurer for five years.

She gave a number of generous gifts to the College, the most recent of which being a sculpture by a celebrated Tanzanian artist.

Asked what she enjoyed most about her time at Homerton she said: “ Helping to establish a sound base for science teaching in Cambridge – and being sociable.”

A confirmed Christian, Helen worshipped at Great St. Mary’s Church, where for 25 years she was a sidesman and on the PCC. Later, she became a very active member of her local church, St. Mark’s, in Newnham.

I have known Helen since I joined the staff at Homerton in 1968. She was one of a formidable group of ladies, who were members of a special generation. Americans refer to them as “The Greatest Generation”, and for once their tendency to overdo the hyperbole can be excused. Theirs was a tough world. It was bad enough to be in a battle for survival against Nazism and Fascism, without being in a world where educating women was considered by many to be a waste of time, and intelligent women were allocated the tail-end of experiments. But this gave them a special strength. That strength was evident in the way Helen battled her long illness. She kept her own high standards and expected others to do the same. Two very ‘Helen’ examples:

Once when I rang to ask if I could visit, she said “Not before noon, Johnny. My hair won’t be right.” And when I visited her shortly before her final illness, as I prepared to leave I pulled a chair on which I had been sitting during our chat, back to its original position by the window. She watched how I did this, smiled gently, and said: “It’s been lovely to see you, Johnny, and I do enjoy your visits. But next time please remember that you don’t move an 18th Century chair by dragging it by its back.”

I will miss Helen, who was a classy lady, but I am happy that her pain has ceased.

John Murrell

ELIZABETH COOK 1925–2015 On Monday 19th January 2015, Victor Watson, Judy Watson, Barbara Pointon and I met in Balsham Church for Elizabeth’s funeral. It was freezing cold. Elizabeth had planned the service herself, from the coloured line-drawing of forget-me-nots on the front of the service booklet to the photograph of a solitary woodland flower on the back. It was her last, silent conversation with us all.

She was born in Chipstead, Surrey, in 1925. Her father was a Fellow and distinguished Professor of Music at the Royal College and the first organist at Southwark Cathedral, a post he occupied from 1905 until his death in 1953. From Croydon Girls’ High School she went on to Girton College to read English in 1943, where she was awarded the College’s Charity Reeves Prize for English. She took her first degree in 1946, and intended to continue to a higher degree with her research topic “The Tribe of Ben: English Classicism from Jonson to Dryden”. A number of post-graduate Fellowships at Radcliffe and Yale were immediately available to her and she decided to accept a one-year Augustus Anson Whitney Fellowship at Radcliffe College, Harvard. She left for the States in the autumn of that year and promptly published two articles in American Journals, one on the first edition ofThomas Browne’s Religio Medici (1643) and the other on the plays of Richard Brome, a 17th century playwright and sometime servant to Ben Jonson. On her return to Girton she became a Carlisle Major Research Scholar and was awarded a Cambridge MLitt in 1951.

A university career seemed to be hers for the asking, but instead she took up teaching in schools in North Norfolk, at Beeston Preparatory School and at Runton Hill School. From there she moved to Sherborne Girls’ School in Devon before finally finding her way back to Cambridge in, or about, 1959, on her appointment to the English Department at Homerton, where she remained until she retired.

Elizabeth was one of Homerton’s eccentrics: she was scholarly and aloof, vulnerable yet strong, a fastidious, demanding teacher, yet students invariably paid tribute to her patience. One of her trade-marks was an elegant, well-used chaise longue in her study and many a candidate was star tled to find her reclining on this unusual piece of furniture, waiting to begin the interview. Other anxious candidates were no doubt heartened by the vase offlowers she kept on her desk. She was not afraid to be herself, and when so moved she could end a discussion with a sharp and peremptory remark.

At one department meeting in College, a new, young colleague on a temporary contract described how, in her practical criticism classes, it was her practice to give her students a poem or passage of prose and invite them to ‘respond’. Elizabeth retorted in icy tones that she had never in her life asked anyone to respond to anything.

Yet sometimes her defensive nature worked against her. Shortly after I joined the College I learned that for many years Elizabeth had avoided the Combination Room because of a disagreement some years earlier. After the next Departmental meeting, in a planned move, Elisabeth Brewer took her right arm, I took her left, and when we came to the parting ofthe ways we firmly steered her, startled but unresisting, into the Combination Room with the rest of us. She never again had her coffee alone in her room.

In 1969 Cambridge University Press published her distinguished book, The Ordinary and the Fabulous in hardback and paperback. She modestly declared that her book was “an attempt to show that a grown-up understanding of life is incomplete without an understanding of myths, legends and fairy tales.” It was much more than “an attempt.” Victor Watson added: “Only a handful of academics ventured into the suspect and disreputable world of classrooms and children’s books. Her book was avant garde in its time, if only because it was written for teachers, librarians and students, and stressed the value and appeal which children can find in fabulous

stories. Such a book was a valued rarity at a time when courses on children’s literature were few and far between.”

After she retired she concentrated on her work for Balsham church, looking after the flowers, the Church silver, as Church Warden, Sidesman, and as an occasionally intimidating member of the Parochial Church Council. She increased her already encyclopaedic knowledge of horticulture and her extensive collection of books – many of which she later donated to the College Library.

Despite the scale of her literary interests she remained to the last rooted in the area of her original research, the early 17th century, and particularly the devotional poetry of Donne, Vaughan and Campion, but George Herbert above all. She debated them at length with her last mentor and good friend, Canon W. Girard in Balsham. Reflecting on the many discussions they enjoyed in those last years, he commented: “Yes, I am sure Elizabeth prayed with the Poets, and when those 16/17th C. Poets were Christian it is no wonder that poetry and prayer ran together... And yet, and yet, Elizabeth and I often talked about language and religion. She was no ‘backs to the wall traditionalist’ about language; but she did expect modern language to make sense and be imaginative...

We went to the theatre occasionally (Cambridge Pantomime and the Cambridge Greek Play.) On one memorable occasion we were driven to London to see the Young Vic put on Ted Hughes adaptation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. There was a lot of nude prancing around the stage, it fazed Elizabeth not one bit! We agreed, it was a very vigorous performance!”

The service ended quietly with Thomas Campion’s Never weather beaten saile after which Elizabeth was taken out of the Church and driven away to the Woodland Burial Ground in Barton accompanied only by the Vicar. To my mind, the final photograph ofa solitary woodland flower was definitely her last word.

John Axon

HILDA COOK (NÉE TODD) (Cert Ed 1940–1942) Mrs. Hilda Cook (néeTodd) who attended Homerton from 1940–1942, died on 5 th January 2013, at the Hope Nursing and Residential Care Home, just around the corner from Homerton, on Brooklands Avenue, Cambridge, aged 90. After teaching in inner London schools and a stint in the War Office, she married in 1946 and moved to Hampstead. In 1956, with her two young children in primary school and a flu outbreak in progress, she was lured back into teaching at the local primary school where she continued working part-time, teaching French until her retirement in 1982.

In seriously declining physical health in May 2009, and with her children living in Northern Scotland and New England respectively, her family decided it would be best to move her to the Hope Nursing Home, where she could be close to her two sisters who were both living in Cambridge. The wonderful staff at the Hope worked their magic, and gradually my mother recovered sufficiently to be able to enjoy daily outings with family members.

I managed to come over to the UK frequently during that time and we visited Homerton together in the summer of2010, the first time for both of us in many years. It was wonderful to reconnect with the college on the 70th anniversary of her starting there, and my 40th!

Although she would grumble about not being in her own home in London, being back in Cambridge was actually really good for her and she loved recalling so many special and detailed memories from a very happy time in her life – including being on the night-time fire patrol at Homerton! Her short-term memory had become very patchy, but she was always bright and alert with a twinkle in her eye when recounting tales of her student days. I pushed her wheelchair around the college grounds numerous times in her final couple ofyears. She was amazed at the new buildings and upgrades, and so proud to be an alumna!

Fiona Cook (BEd 1970–1973)

MRS PAMELA GADDES JP (NÉE MARCHBANK) (Cert Ed 1956–1958)

Died 23 June 2015 Pam was born in Sheffield but spent most ofher early years in Wellingborough. She was educated at Wellingborough High School and Homerton College. She was married to Gordon for nearly 57 years and was mother to Sarah and Jim, Sister to Sue and grandmother to Sam, Fergus, Ben and Florence Pickles and to Faye, Emily, Sophia and Luca Gaddes.

Pam lived in Hemel Hempstead for 50 years, 5 years in Highfield and 45 years in Adeyfield, despite thinking that the stay there might only be for two years. She was a Junior School teacher for over 40 years, in Wellingborough, Cambridge and Peterborough and final in Hemel Hempstead at Belswains and Maylands Junior Schools, and then for 11 years at Aycliffe Drive, where she was a Teacher Governor. She was a founder Group Tutor for the Dacorum Adult Literacy Campaign. She was an inspiring teacher – aged 19, at the end of three Summer weeks of temporary teaching in a Wellingborough Junior School, the Head described her as ‘a most reliable and conscientious teacher’, who ‘conducted and marked end of term tests most efficiently’, whilst‘playing the piano was a great help in assembly’ and ‘producing delightful musical items at the end of term concert’, and ‘her enthusasiasm and special ability in teaching PE was an inspiration to the children.’

Pam was heavily involved in her community, serving as an SDP Borough Councillor for Cupid Green, as a Dacorum Magistrate for 12 years, as Chairman then President of Relate for 15 years, as Chair of the Hemel Hempstead Anglican Deanery, Chair of the Hemel Hempstead and Berkhempstead Deaneries’ Social Responsibility Committee, and as a Church Warden at St Paul’s Church, Highfield. She was invovlved in the star tup of two Nursery Play Groups, was a Member of the ‘DENS Future’ Working Party and a Founder Trustee of the Langa Township Pre-School Trust,

supporting young children in Cape Town.

Pam had many loves – her family and friends

foremost – and enjoyed classical and church music

and jazz, travel at home and abroad, reading, and

sports including hockey, tennis, squash, golf and

skiing. She loved entertaining at her hospitable

Highfield Lane home, where she passed away

peacefully on 23 rd June, following a long stay in

Watford and Hammersmith hospitals.

DR PETER HUCKSTEP Fellow until November 2013, Lecturer in Education with Mathematics, RSM

Died 20 July 2015 Almost exactly thirty years ago, one day in 1985, I was sitting in an armchair in a small lounge in Homerton College opposite a young primary school teacher from Redbridge in East London. Peter Huckstep was an applicant for a place on a one-year diploma course in mathematics education. Even at this first encounterit was apparent that Peter had interests and qualities that marked him out as unusual amongst his peers. The course was to be in mathematics, but Peter held a post of responsibility for music in his school – he was a very good guitarist, in fact – and he had just been awarded an MA in philosophy of education from the London Institute of Education, and with distinction.

Fourteen years later, one afternoon in September, I sat with Peter again, this time in a pub close to the Institute of Education, just the two of us as before, and we raised our beer glasses in celebration of his successful defence of his PhD thesis a few hours earlier. The thesis was in philosophy of education, supervised by Professor John White, and it was about the fundamental purposes of mathematics education. This time we were looking forward to becoming colleagues in Cambridge, where he was now working, and to which I was about to return.

After leaving school, Peter spent the first ten

years of his working life in the carpet industry, before training as a teacher. 10 years in schools in Harrow and Redbridge, two years as an advisory teacher, and more study for a degree in mathematics at the Open University led to a post in teacher education at Anglia Poytechnic University in Chelmsford. After eight years at APU he came to Cambridge in 1997 to take up the job for which, I like to think, everything else had been a preparation. He was honoured further in 2005 by being elected a Fellow of Homerton College, a position he held until his illness began to limit what he could undertake.

His Cambridge appointment was as Lecturer in Primary Mathematics education, in which role he was a much-valued member of a strong team. His sessions with students, ostensibly on the teaching of some aspect of mathematics, invariably included a second, philosophical focus: on epistemology, aesthetics, on reason, or something else. Peter was also a core member of the teaching and supervising team for the Masters course in mathematics education, and latterly he took up his rightful place in the Philosophy of Education Team. As a College Fellow, he played an important part in building up Homerton as a multi-disciplinary College of the University.

Peter’s published research centred on three topics; the purposes of mathematics education; the nature of creativity in relation to school mathematics; and the nature of mathematics teachers’ knowledge. It was my great pleasure to work with him on these last two, and some of my happiest times as a researcher were spent with Peter,AnneThwaites, FayTurner and (initially) Jane Warwick. Most recently his research had turned to philosophical problems of what is called ‘testimony’, in recognition that much of what we ‘know’ rests on what others assure us to be the case.

Peter’s published output was relatively modest, and this fact takes us to the heart of who Peter was as a person, and what inspired the affection as well as the respect of his colleagues and students. These days the publishing universe is awash with papers and books by academics anxious to build and sustain their reputations, and to satisfy their departmental managers. But Peter was different: in a recent email a mutual research colleague from York described him as a free spirit, who came to things“left offield”, recalling (and I quote) the“dreamy mystified look on his face … I sometimes wondered ifhe was a bit baffled at the way [the rest of us just] got on with things”. Peter was not fond of administration, nor was he very good at it. He preferred working in teams to leading them. In all my professional dealings with Peter, I found him to be a deeply moral person, with a firm and instinctive desire to do the right thing. His ethics were guided more by Aristotle than the BERA handbook.

I conclude with what perhaps mattered most to his colleagues, students and friends: Peter’s generosity of spirit, his humanity and his faithfulness. Peter was simply a wonderful person to be with. He was naturally gregarious and he loved to be with people in both professional and social situations. He had a sharp mind and a gentle, often self-deprecating, sense of humour. He had a prodigious memory for facts, and was something of a renaissance man in the range of his expertise, but he wore his talents and his cleverness lightly, and seemed incapable of selfaggrandisement or boasting. A former musiciancolleague described Peter as a‘living fire’, such was his total engagement in their discussions about music and mathematics. This passion for human life and endeavour made him an inspiring teacher; it is reasonable to say that his students loved him, for his enthusiasm, his interest in them, and his willingness to make time for them. Most endearingly of all, he took a genuine interest in the interests of others, seemingly no matter what they were. Even in his last months, when he was very ill, he asked about others and wanted to know what they were doing.

I shall miss Peter very much. And in that regard, I know that I am in very good company.

Tim Rowland, July 2015

BARRY JONES 25 Dec 1938 – 1April 2015 Barry Jones was born in Woking, Surrey on Christmas Day 1938. He attended Woking Grammar School and went on to Birmingham University, where he gained a BA in French and German. After university, he taught French and German in secondary schools in Birmingham and Hertfordshire, whilst completing a Licence-èslettres in History from the University of Lille.

He came to Homerton as a Lecturer in the Modern Languages Department in 1971, eventually becoming Head of that department and, later, Lecturer in Education at the Faculty of Education of the University of Cambridge. During his long career at Homerton, in addition to his brilliance as a lecturer and trainer of teachers, he made an immense contribution to both national and international teacher-development programmes. Barry was totally committed to the College and was delighted when he was elected a Fellow and, later, Emeritus Fellow in 2010.

He saw his role as helping the development of the theoretical and practical expertise of teachers, encouraging them to use their ingenuity and creativity to create lessons, which would pioneer the use of IT in languages, he devised the first computer game (Granville) for French learners in secondary schools at a time when BBC computers were making their appearance in classrooms. He published over a hundred books, articles and resource materials for teachers and children and developed an assessment process for teachers of modern languages for use internationally.

In 1996, the French government appointed him Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques. As a great Francophile, Barry was justly, though characteristically modestly, proud of this recognition of his contribution to French culture.

In 2013, Barry was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a terminal disease and asbestosrelated cancer, which was probably triggered by exposure to the asbestos which was common in the schools and institutions in which he spent a large part of his life. Positive, good humoured and stoic to the end, whilst realistically accepting the limitations of his illness, he constantly sought alternatives, rather than giving in. Last year, he bravely put aside his illness to attend a conference at the European Centre for Modern Languages, at which he was able to experience first-hand the influence ofhis life’s work. Until a few days before his death on 1st April this year, he was working with a dear friend and colleague on his selected writings, which will be made available online as a free resource.

Never ill-tempered, judgmental or intemperate, he loved life – his family, good wine, delicious food, the company of friends, and – his never-ending project – the reconstruction and upkeep of his beloved vintage Riley. In later years Calligraphy offered an outlet for his meticulous artistic talent. He was a wise, caring, warm man with the gentlest sense of humour and an infectious enthusiasm for whatever he did. We were privileged to know him.

He is survived by his wife, Gwenneth and by their two sons, Daniel and Matthew, to whom we extend our sincere sympathies.

John Murrell

JACQUELINE JOAN THOMPSON (Cert Ed 1943–1945) Jacqueline Joan Thompson was an only child born in Norfolk and brought up in Norwich. She attended The Blyth School and then trained as a teacher at Homerton College from 1943 to 1945. Her college report states that she “is a friendly and unselfconscious person, with plenty of vitality.” She had fond memories of Homerton and kept in touch with several of her contemporaries.

On graduating, in the mistaken belief that it was synonymous with the West End, she took a teaching post in West Ham, London. It was a for tunate error: she came under the beneficial influence ofthe charismatic headmistress Elsie

Parker, later president of the National Union of Teachers, and also made a life-long friend of her daughter, Barbara, and Barbara’s future husband Jack Tizard.

She married the scientist Walter Weinstein, later Professor of Physics at Imperial College. The family name was eventually changed to Welford.

Jacqueline was passionate about music and once queued overnight for tickets to hear Klemperer conduct a Beethoven symphony cycle at the Royal Festival Hall. She was a passable pianist and also took violin lessons at Blackheath Conservatoire. Languages were another love. As well as prolific reading ofEnglish literature and writing of poetry, she took classes at various times in Hebrew, Russian and Latin. Her French and German were sufficiently fluent to enable her to translate scientific books and papers with technical assistance from Walter. The proceeds funded the purchase ofa hi-fi system on which she enjoyed listening to Lieder and opera. A favourite singer was Kathleen Ferrier.

Jacqueline was a woman of deep convictions who was unafraid to state her position and expound her views on subjects such as politics (she was a devout socialist) and organised religion – which she abhorred and believed to be the root ofmost conflicts.

Jacqueline and Walter are survived by

two children. David became a management

consultant after a shor t flir tation with teaching

and biochemistry research. Mark attended the

Royal Ballet School, danced with Birmingham

Royal Ballet for many years and now runs a

successful floristry business.Through Mark,

Jacqueline developed a keen interest in, and

knowledge of, ballet and even accompanied the

Company on several international tours.

The family lived in Blackheath and a memorial

bench to Jacqueline and Walter is to be placed on

the Heath near their home in Orchard Drive.

After their divorce, Jacqueline and Walter

remained friends and enjoyed visits to the

opera and ballet together. Jacqueline resumed

her teaching career, specialising in remedial

English. She always identified herselfas a

Norfolk woman and spent much of her

retirement in the small Norfolk villages of

Corpusty and Salle. After brief spells in London

and St Leonards-on-Sea, she lived her final

years in Battle, where she died aged 90 after a

short illness on 12 May 2015.

Jacqueline will be remembered for her acerbic

wit, her strong convictions and her generous

charitable bequests n

The memorial bench to Jacqueline and Walter on Blackheath.