My brother Ian Dempster, who has died aged 77, taught for 25 years from 1977 at Bretton College in West Yorkshire, set in what is now Yorkshire Sculpture Park, eventually becoming deputy head of English there.
The son of Kenneth Dempster, a draper and salesman, and his wife, Peggy (nee Higgs), Ian grew up in Bristol at the beginning of the second world war. At Queen Elizabeth’s Hospital school, Ian enjoyed English and the arts, and outside enjoyed drawing, photography, architecture, rugby and cats.
On leaving school in 1957 he joined a Bristol office of the Inland Revenue, hated the work and left. I was born just before Ian went to train as a teacher of English and art at St Paul’s college, Cheltenham. From there he mentored me in reading, and sent letters and cards, often annotated by his drawings, encouraging me to write back.
In 1968 he married Rosa French, who had been his landlady when he went to teach at Felixstowe high school. She had been widowed and Ian became a stepfather to Tony and later a stepgrandfather. Reading to the children he would “do all the voices”, and he invented games to play.
In the same year the couple moved to Morecambe. Rosa ran a B&B and Ian studied English at Lancaster University, then philosophy and in 1972 gained an MA. He supplemented their income by working on the M6, joking that he built the Tebay section of motorway single-handed. It was thirsty work, and he loved a good pint in good company, combining holidays abroad with events such as the Munich beer festival.
In the early 1970s he secured a teaching job at the Ecole des Roches, Valais, Switzerland. Always an enthusiastic letter writer, he once typed me a letter on toilet roll when he ran out of stationery.
On returning to Britain, Ian secured a teaching job at Bretton College – he took early retirement in 2002 and moved to Rendlesham in Suffolk, to be nearer his wife’s family.
In his spare time he read the Guardian, a habit from his working days when he would trawl the arts section for snippets of information, reviews, poetry and literary criticism. He won so many Guardian crossword competitions that he ended up with several sets of dictionaries as prizes.
He is survived by Rosa, his granddaughters, Lorraine, Charlotte and Victoria, and me.
