My father, John Bate, a poet, librarian and father of 12, who has died aged 95, was a private man who reserved expression of his deepest self to his poetry.
John was born in London, son of Leonard, a civil servant, and Maud (nee Banks). After leaving school, he went to work in Birmingham public library. He was 19 when the second world war started and he became a conscientious objector. He was put to work picking potatoes in Wales. Later on he joined a Sapper unit with other “conscies” and a group of them started Oasis, an underground magazine about the horrors of war. Lifelong friendships were formed.
John started to get his poetry published and to do readings, attracting a following of intellectuals. Among these was Peggie Banks, a teacher, whom he married in 1945. At this time, John converted to Roman Catholicism.
After the war, John trained as a librarian through a correspondence course. But this romantic and idealistic young couple decided their main aim was to be “a soil for sons and daughters”. Their married life took them to live among other like-minded Catholics from Cornwall to the Scottish Highlands, where John ran a chicken farm. He then spent five years studying for a degree in geography and history at St Andrews University, and did his teacher training.
These skills qualified him for the post of chief tutor librarian at the Napier College of Science and Technology in Edinburgh (now Edinburgh Napier University) and he and his family moved there in the mid-1960s. John was at the forefront of librarianship and created the first information science degree course for the study of the digitalising of information, for which he was appointed MBE in 1982.
Poetry was his lifelong love and his readings – especially of his anthology, Damaged Beauty Needs a New Design (1981) – were in demand at the Netherbow and the Roman Catholic Chaplaincy Centre in Edinburgh. His home became a hub of intellectual Catholic life.
In 1985 John and Peggie retired to Oxford, where their home continued to be a haven for children, grandchildren, poets and Catholic thinkers. He was always a keen photographer and his walls were filled with pictures of his family throughout the years.
His final move, in 2000, was to Berwick-upon-Tweed, where he would swim regularly in the sea well into his 80s.
He is survived by Peggie, their 12 children, 27 grandchildren and 13 great- grandchildren, and by his sister, Dorothy, and brother, Alan.
