My father, David Rubinstein, who has died aged 86, was a social historian who wrote on education, housing, the labour movement and women’s history. He was also an inspiring teacher.
One of a generation of active intellectual socialists, he was also involved with the Ramblers, serving on its executive committee between 1967 and 1988, and pioneering the route of the Wolds Way national trail.
David was born in Cleveland, Ohio, to Beryl Rubinstein, a musician, and Elsa (nee Landesman). He attended Cleveland Heights high school then studied modern history at Swarthmore College, in Pennsylvania, graduating in 1954. A cycling holiday in Europe a couple of years before had left him charmed by the British countryside and the kindness of its people.
From McCarthyite America, postwar Britain looked like a congenial place to live and work, and so he travelled to the UK to do a PhD at the London School of Economics.
After the LSE, where his involvement in the Labour party began, he taught in some of the new comprehensive schools in London. In 1964 he became a British citizen and the following year moved to Hull University to teach social history. There he joined the Ramblers, as well as campaigning for the rights of Palestinians and for better public transport.
In 1956 he married Shirley Livingstone and they had three children, Peter, John and me. The marriage ended in divorce. He then met Ann Holt, a writer and researcher, whom he married in 1974. She was all the things he was not – from a working-class family, practical and tactful. They were a devoted couple who travelled, researched and campaigned together.
After he left Hull University in 1988, David, a francophile, taught at three French universities, Tours, Angers and Boulogne, and in the UK worked in local government, in Tower Hamlets, in the East End of London, as an adviser to the leader of the council, and in Maidstone, Kent, as an adviser to the Labour group. During this period David and Ann became Quakers.
They retired to York in 1997. David continued to research and write, publishing an autobiography, But He’ll Remember (1999), and works on the Quakers, York and the history of the Labour party.
He had a stroke before his 70th birthday but recovered to do and see more than most, travelling all over the UK and Europe. He had not owned a car since the 1970s, and relied on, and supported, public transport. Cuts to rural services left him angry.
He could be a difficult man, fiercely intelligent and highly opinionated. To his surprise, he became more dependent on his family the older he got. However his assiduous correspondence and generous hospitality meant he sustained relationships for decades.
He is survived by Ann, his children, six grandchildren and two step-grandchildren, and his sister, Ellen.
