My friend John Slater, who has died aged 87, was an educator and historian of art who made significant contributions to the cultural life of both the UK and Australia. In the UK, he advised eight secretaries of state for education and science, including Margaret Thatcher, Shirley Williams and Sir Keith Joseph, and contributed to the national curriculum for history in 1991.
In Australia, he published groundbreaking doctoral research in an analysis of urban and suburban images in fine art and photography from the period 1920-45, a period when Australians’ view of themselves evolved dramatically.
John was born in Hampstead, north London, the son of William Ebeneezer (Bill) Slater, a sales manager for Cambridge University Press, and Helen Salton Slater (nee Wilson), a nurse. His uncle, Sir Charles Wilson (1909-2002), vice-chancellor at the universities of Leicester and Glasgow in the 1960s, was a great influence. John attended Rutlish school, Merton, south London. In 1945, he was conscripted into UK Intelligence Corps in Austria. On trips to Italy he discovered a love of Renaissance art. In late 1948, John went to study history at Pembroke College, Oxford, and was social secretary of the Oxford Labour club.
In 1952 he went to work as a housemaster at Bedales school, then became a schools inspector for Her Majesty’s Inspectorate (1968-87). In 1988, John became visiting professor of education at the Institute of Education, University College London. In 1995, Cassell published his Teaching History in the New Europe, for the Council of Europe.
John took many holidays and extended visits to Australia, and in 2004 the Miegunyah Press (Melbourne) published his Through Artists’ Eyes: Australian Suburbs and their Cities 1919-1945. In 2006, at the age of 79, he emigrated to Melbourne.
His life in effect spanned four careers: as a teacher; as a policy initiator and adviser; a schools inspector; and in historical research in a previously unploughed field.
He is survived by his brother, Andrew, his niece, Katharine, his nephew, Barnaby, and his great nephew, Jacob.
