My mother, Pat Miles, who has died aged 84, wrote a series of novels for young adults that were illuminated by her passion for history and her classical education. Each book (under her full name Patricia) was full of loving detail taken from people and places she knew.
If I Survive (1976) tells the story of Lady Cathcart of Tewin in Hertfordshire, held prisoner for 20 years by her husband; Disturbing Influence (1979) takes place around the A1 and features me as a principal character; and The Gods in Winter (1978) chronicles the appearance of various Greeks gods to a family much like our own.
Pat was born in Bolton, Greater Manchester, the only child of Robert, a grocery wholesaler, and Bride (nee Clancy), who hailed from Tipperary. Her mother had stories published in Ireland’s Own magazine. From Mount St Joseph convent school in Bolton, Pat won a scholarship to Somerville College, Oxford, where in 1953 she married a fellow undergraduate, Francis Miles, who became a sales executive with the chemical company ICI.
She began her teaching career in 1964 at Orpington grammar school for girls, in south-east London. The following year she, Francis and their three children moved to Hertfordshire, where she taught English, French and general studies at the Nobel school, Stevenage, from 1969 to 1978. Later she was a tutor on creative writing courses for Hertfordshire schoolchildren.
Her other books included Nobody’s Child (1975), The Mind Pirates (1983), Sweet Peril (1987) and Beloved Enemy (1987). She never relied on her novels for an income, instead combining her writing with family life and teaching.
In 1978-79 Pat accompanied Francis on a secondment to Japan, where she taught English as a foreign language. She later worked as a guide at Knebworth House where she was commissioned to write An Uncommon Criminal (1999, with Jill Williams), her last completed project, about the life of the suffragette Lady Constance Lytton. Pat was a member of a local reading group and was an active member of the Society of Authors.
Pat was loved by all who knew her and although her last years were clouded by dementia she kept to the end her warm, witty, friendly and charming personality.
Francis predeceased her. She is survived by her children, Siobhan, Hugh and me, and by her grandchildren, Harry and Eddy.
