My father, Jak Kissell, who has died aged 80, trained more than 5,000 teachers over the course of a 40-year career in education. His passion for teaching English was fired by his love of literature, linguistics and languages. He had a good knowledge of French, Italian, German, Ancient Greek, Latin, Anglo-Saxon (Old English), and a smattering of Old Norse.
He was born James Kissell in Buckhurst Hill, Essex, the son of George Kissell, a lab technician who had made gyroscopes for Spitfire planes in the second world war, and his wife, Elizabeth (nee Anderson).
After leaving St Ignatius College, Enfield, Jak joined the Royal Air Force reserve. He received his pilot officer commission in 1964 and intended a career in the cockpit, but government cutbacks meant he would not be able to fly, so he chose university instead, and went to Queen Mary College, University of London to study English.
Graduating with a first in 1961, he went on to take his BLitt from Pembroke College, Oxford, and in 1968 became a lecturer at La Sainte Union College of Higher Education (now part of the University of Southampton). While there, he took an MSc in linguistics from Reading, which proved a tipping point for his career and led him to focus on language as well as literature.
Jak married Roslyn Keller in 1965, and they had two sons. They moved a short way east in 1972 when Jak joined West Sussex Institute of Higher Education, now the University of Chichester. As a senior lecturer in English language, literature and drama, he shaped courses that built its reputation, attracting students from Saudi Arabia and China.
He also taught extensively at Open University summer schools and was an invigilator and marker for the Cambridge examination board. He retired in 2004 but continued to lecture part-time for the Open University and the University of Portsmouth until 2012.
Outside classroom and lecture hall, Jak was a patron and performer in the arts scene of West Sussex, directing and acting in summer Shakespeare productions at Chichester’s West Dean Gardens, playing his violin in the Hayling Island orchestra and singing with Felpham community singers.
His appetite for life and language was arrested only by the onset of dementia and supranuclear palsy in 2019. Even after moving into a nursing home, he still enjoyed having Proust read to him by his carers.
He is survived by Ros, Robert and me, and his grandchildren, Matthew, Alex and Alexa.
