My father, Alan Wright, who has died aged 91, was an English teacher who went on to train teachers and be a school inspector for Kent county council. He was also a natural entertainer and had many passions and pastimes, including cricket, literature and the theatre.
Coming from a working-class background, Alan said that his grammar school days, then Oxford education, transformed him in a number of ways. Certainly, he became a convincingly middle-class “culture vulture” who organised many author talks for teachers, including, among others, Russell Hoban, Quentin Blake and Raymond Briggs.
At Oxford – the first person from his family to go to university – Alan appeared in a production of King Lear that boasted in its cast Patrick Garland, Vernon Dobtcheff and Ken Loach.
Born in south-west London, to Alice (nee Lovick) and Walter Wright, a tool maker at a toy factory, Alan went to Raynes Park county grammar school for boys. He then did national service with the Royal Artillery in Hong Kong, after which he went to Worcester College, Oxford, to study English literature.
Alan met Shirley Revasse at a youth club when they were teenagers, and they married in 1959. After graduation the same year, Alan trained as a teacher in central London, then got a job at the Leys school in Cambridge teaching English. During the happy time that he spent there, he benefited from an arrangement with the English Speaking Union that enabled him to swap roles with a teacher at the Hun school in Princeton, New Jersey. As a result, he and Shirley travelled extensively in the US.
In 1968 a new job teaching teachers at the College of Education in Falmer saw Alan and the family move to East Sussex, eventually settling in Lewes. He then became a school inspector for Kent county council.
At 55, Alan took early retirement from Kent and a part-time role teaching teachers at Sussex University. There, Alan also studied for a second degree, in history of art, after which he lectured on the subject for the University of the Third Age.
Shirley died in 2021, after which Alan found great comfort in frequent visits to the Depot cinema in Lewes.
He is survived by his children, Judith, Richard and me, and by his grandchildren, Millie, Niamh, Emily and Oliver.
