My husband, David Rutter, who has died aged 82, was a well-known teacher in Brighton who also helped to introduce sushi to the town through a catering business he set up on his retirement.
David taught English and drama at Nevill school (later Blatchington Mill school), Hove, for many years, and he eventually became assistant head. He was inspirational in the classroom and is remembered warmly by pupils for his imaginative lessons and idiosyncratic style. In 1988 he took early retirement and went for several months to Hawaii to learn how to make sushi, which at the time was little known or eaten in Britain.
On his return home David decided to set up Sacred Crane Sushi, a business that brought sushi to the people of Brighton. Preparing the food from a separate kitchen in our home, he catered for shops, hotels, pubs, parties and events, and sushi became popular in the local area.
David was born in Ipswich, Suffolk, to Chas, a clerk, and Mabel (nee Pearse), a shop assistant. His parents had met at a Workers’ Educational Association function, and their bookshelves were filled with volumes from Victor Gollancz’s Left Book Club, which had a profound impact on David. He was a bright student at Northgate grammar school for boys, Ipswich, but felt his curiosity was stifled there and became fervently opposed to single-sex schooling.
Wanting to broaden his experience, he joined the RAF, but although he loved aircraft he disliked militarism and became involved in the peace movement, later becoming a Quaker. Many jobs followed, but teaching became his vocation and after working in the East End of London he moved to Brighton and studied for an MA in education at the University of Sussex. He subsequently took up his post at Nevill school, where we met when I arrived to teach English and drama.
His retirement was full of adventure and travel – he visited Brazil 25 times, often for carnival, and he gathered an extensive music collection, curating two Brighton festival radio programmes, one about covers of songs by unlikely musicians and the other about Hawaiian music. He lived in Brighton for almost 50 years, and loved his adopted home town.
David is survived by me, by his children, Carl and Nadia, from his first marriage to Pat (nee Field), which ended in divorce, and by four grandchildren.
