Virtuoso trumpeter who honed his craft with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers

The teaching of jazz in conservatoires may now be commonplace, but for decades the art was informally learned by listening to records and sharing ideas. Many of the giants who shaped jazz as it sounds today learned from each other, and from the pioneers who preceded them. A rare few learned their music formally and informally in about equal measure. One of that handful was the trumpeter Donald Byrd, who has died aged 80.

Byrd spent much of his life in academic institutions studying everything from composition and music education to law, but his craft as a trumpeter was honed in one of the most famous of all road-going jazz finishing schools – Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. Through the ranks of the Messengers, from the mid-1950s to the late 1980s, there passed a procession of stars-to-be, nurtured by the drummer Blakey's belief that the best young players to hire were the ones with the talent and determination to become bandleaders themselves. Despite a roster of Blakey trumpeters over the years that included Clifford Brown, Lee Morgan and Wynton Marsalis, one of the most celebrated of brass-playing Messengers was the gifted Byrd.

He was born in Detroit, Michigan, where he attended Cass technical high school. Byrd played in a military band while in the US air force, took a music degree at Wayne State University in Michigan and then studied music education at the Manhattan School of Music in New York. He joined the Jazz Messengers in the mid-1950s. Byrd's trumpet predecessors in Blakey's company had already included the graceful, glossy-toned Brown and the Dizzy Gillespie-influenced Kenny Dorham, but the newcomer with his polished phrasing and luxurious tone was recognised as a technical master equal to both.

He was even heralded as the new guiding light in jazz trumpet, and the acclaim intensified after Brown died in a 1956 road accident. Byrd's talent seemed to encompass some of Brown's spontaneous, narrative-generating strength and his exquisite tone, as well as Miles Davis's pacing, and the fire and penetrating attack of the first-wave bebop trumpeters inspired by Gillespie. After that racing start, Byrd eventually prioritised academic work over musical creativity – but until the arrival of the similarly skilled Freddie Hubbard, and his own withdrawal to the classroom, Byrd was briefly one of modern jazz's leading young trumpeters.

He was prolifically active in the late 1950s, in demand for sessions on the Savoy, Riverside and Blue Note labels, in the company of Max Roach, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins and Horace Silver among others. At the end of the decade he was also leading or co-leading his own ensembles, mostly operating in the laconically pyrotechnical, blues-inflected hard-bop style. Byrd regularly worked with the bop pianist George Wallington and with the alto saxophonist and composer Gigi Gryce, and in 1958 he led a quintet including the Belgian saxophonist Bobby Jaspar on a European tour.

On his return to the US, Byrd teamed up with the excellent baritone saxophonist Pepper Adams, and the two continued to mine the hard-bop seam with various partners, including the then little-known pianist Herbie Hancock. Byrd sounded as polished as ever, but a shade predictable alongside more individualistic players such as Adams, or Wayne Shorter and Hancock, with both of whom he played on the 1961 album Free Form.

In the early 1960s, Byrd studied composition with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, and though he periodically visited the Blue Note studios for steadily more easy-listening ventures in the 1960s, African-American musical history became his central preoccupation. He took up posts at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey; the Hampton Institute in Virginia; Howard University in Washington; and North Carolina Central University. He was a pioneering force in establishing jazz studies in American colleges and conservatoires (evolving in the process into a leading African-American ethnomusicologist), regularly lectured for the New York outreach organisation Jazzmobile, and developed an education programme he called Music + Math = Art, to link the teaching of music and mathematics. Byrd later became a distinguished artist in residence at Delaware State University, from 1996 to 2001 and then from 2009, founding a $10,000 scholarship fund in his name.

At Howard, Byrd became chairman of the black music department in the 1970s. Dedicating himself to raising the status of black American music and securing equality for black players, he studied law as well as music to broaden the scope of the advice he could offer in his lectures and workshops. Byrd said in the 1970s that he was addressing "the plight of black musicians in academia … Until we get an integrated view of things with respect to black music, nothing is going to happen". It was this concern, rather than the material success and supposed musical dumbing-down for which he was lambasted, that probably influenced Byrd's decision to embrace the pop- and soul-influenced end of jazz. He wanted to draw attention to the situation of black music in colleges in the most high-profile way he could, even if the results did nothing to enhance the respect his musicianship had previously commanded.

Forming the Blackbyrds soul and funk band from a pool of his Howard University students, Byrd directed some lucrative if artistically unsteady forays into dancefloor jazz and fusion. His million-selling 1973 album Black Byrd made him a major star again, and brought Blue Note more income than the label had ever generated from any release before. But the follow-ups in 1975 and 1976 became increasingly bland.

In 1987, Byrd returned to jazz, recording for the experienced producer Orrin Keepnews's Landmark label, on a primarily hard-bop repertoire that by the final recording, A City Called Heaven (1991), was also including interpretations of Henry Purcell, and the voice of a mezzo-soprano. Byrd's old blazing virtuosity was gone but he could still be an affecting player of ballads, and his front-rank partners included the saxophonists Joe Henderson and Kenny Garrett, and the vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson.

Byrd's legacy is his contribution to music education in a culture that spawned jazz but then neglected it – a role he pursued from the unique vantage point of having been a leading player in the idiom. His work has been sampled by pop and hip-hop artists including Public Enemy and Ice Cube, and many young musicians at work today owe their education, and the widespread acceptance of their art, to his tireless pursuit of stature and respect for jazz.

Byrd married Lorraine Glover in 1955.

• Donaldson Toussaint L'Ouverture Byrd II, trumpeter and educator, born 9 December 1932; died 4 February 2013

My friend and former colleague Colin Bickler, who has died aged 78 after a short illness, was associated with City University London for 20 years. As a fellow in international journalism, he influenced the careers of dozens of graduates now working in many parts of the world.

Colin was born in Leeds and migrated with his family to New Zealand, where he worked in the civil service. He began his career in journalism with the Dominion newspaper in New Zealand, having edited the Victoria University student weekly, Salient, in 1959. He joined the eastern desk at Reuters in London in 1965.

He was a correspondent, bureau chief and regional manager with Reuters for 26 years, serving in Tel Aviv, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Jakarta, Nairobi, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Turkey, before moving back to the corporate relations department in London. Colin reported on the Yom Kippur war in 1973 and the Cyprus conflict the following year. He was also a member of the press entourage that followed Henry Kissinger's 1970s shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East.

On retiring from Reuters, as well as working at City University London from 1992, he was a Unesco panellist on press freedom in the Caribbean; conducted seminars for the human rights organisation Article 19 and the International Press Institute; and was a member of the Foreign Office's freedom of expression advisory panel, the Human Rights Consultative Committee and the Communication and Information Committee of the UK National Commission for Unesco.

Colin helped to found the International News Safety Institute, which works globally to establish safe and secure environments for journalists, and for the last decade actively promoted risk awareness for journalists. He was lead editor in 2004 of a handbook for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, and a former committee member of the London branch of Reporters Without Borders.

He is survived by his wife, Shirley, son, Simon, and daughters, Rachel and Deborah, and three grandchildren.

My friend and sister-in-law Wendy Mason, who has died of cancer aged 63, had a successful career in industry before finding her true vocation as a Samaritan. She started on the desk for the Samaritans in 2003, listening to callers, but soon rose to become a divisional director and finally, in the summer of 2012, regional director for the East Midlands.

Wendy was born and raised in Hyde, Cheshire, but left the north of England in 1967 to study chemistry at Exeter University. After graduating, Wendy joined the Ford Motor Company and rose swiftly in this male-dominated industry to become a senior human resources executive. She was subsequently headhunted by ICL computers and made her mark by becoming HR director of several different divisions.

Following early retirement from ICL in 2000, Wendy worked as a consultant to a number of small companies and then as an independent assessor for the Office of Public Appointments. In 2006 she helped set up the Judicial Appointments Commission, the body now responsible for the selection of judges in England and Wales. However, despite these high achievements, Wendy gained the deepest satisfaction from working as a volunteer with the Samaritans.

In 1994, she settled in a small village near Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire. To Wendy, this was a magical place: she had finally found her home. It was a place of rest, refuge and fun with her many friends and family; supplies of chocolate and champagne were always on tap. She was involved in many aspects of village life and in summer 2012 took great pleasure in organising an Open Gardens event for charitable causes.

Wendy spent her final days organising her friends and family to carry out her wishes and giving precise instructions as to how she wanted her life to be celebrated. She insisted that mourners should leave the crematorium to the sound of Monty Python's Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.

Wendy is survived by her mother, Nora, and younger sisters, Vivienne and Beverley.

My former colleague Dave Borthwick, who has died of pneumonia after a long illness, aged 65, was one of the world's leading animation directors. He pioneered a unique style mixing stop-frame models and pixilated live actors.

Dave was born in Bristol, and graduated in graphic design from the West of England College of Art (now the University of the West of England) in 1969. He went on to design and operate light shows and multimedia lighting which made extensive use of 2D animation techniques. Six years with the Crystal Theatre, a Bristol-based experimental theatre company, were followed by a postgraduate radio film and television course in 1977 at Bristol University, during which he made Recent Fiction, a live action film.

Dave worked as a cameraman in the film and TV industry in Britain and Denmark. He directed a music video for the Korgis in 1979 and short films for the BBC and Danish TV. In the mid-1980s he founded bolexbrothers with his friend Dave Alex Riddett, and together they made animated films such as I Feel Free (1984), I Can Hear the Grass Grow (1986), Vikings Go Pumping (1987) and Igors Horn (1988).

Nursery Crimes – Tom Thumb Pilot, an eight-minute film written and directed by Dave, was screened on the BBC at Christmas in 1988. This led bolexbrothers to produce the feature film The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb (1993) with Dave as writer, director, editor and one of the seven animators. It is a dark tale told in 61 minutes with stop-frame models and pixilated live actors. This brought high critical acclaim, winning 17 awards worldwide, including, in 1994, the best technical achievement award at the Evening Standard British film awards.

Bolexbrothers became a studio with an international reputation for innovative animation that encouraged and supported new talents. Dave also directed award-winning commercials for international clients that included Coca-Cola, Budweiser, Carlsberg, Reebok and Lego.

By 2000 Dave was running bolexbrothers alongside the producer Andy Leighton. He co-directed the CGI animated feature film The Magic Roundabout (2005) and was set to direct a feature-length stop-motion adaptation of Gilbert Shelton's underground comic The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers.

He is survived by two daughters, Nancy and Bo, a son, Tom, two grandchildren, Milo and Havanna, and his sister, Mary.

My lifelong friend John Gazey was born, lived, and has died aged 71, in the same house in the mining village of Bircotes, north Nottinghamshire. The whole of his working life was spent at nearby Harworth Colliery.

Mining villages were country villages and our childhood flourished outdoors – bikes, sport, the woods, the Keswick apple tree in his grandparents' garden that we had a particular affection for. It seems the fruit are even better if allowed to ripen. John's coalminer father, Stan, was a poacher of rabbits and we would watch, fascinated, as he repaired his nets like some land-locked fisherman.

In 1952 John and I were dazzled spectators at the very first match Doncaster Rovers played under floodlights – against the famous Newcastle United team that was about to win the FA Cup. Rovers won 7-2! And in 1953 our boyhoods were changed forever: England v Hungary at Wembley. After Nándor Hidegkuti's hat-trick contributed to Hungary's 6-3 victory, John's mazy dribbles in our umpteen-a-side games would be accompanied by his commentary on his own play: "And Hidegkuti dribbles past the defender, cuts inside and slots it into the bottom corner."

For some reason he acquired the nickname "Charlie". He told of riding with Harworth Cycling Club and finding his bike difficult to pedal. Our local hero, the road racing cyclist Tommy Simpson, said: "What's up Charlie? Let's ay a look." Then, like magic, John's pedalling became smooth and free.

At the age of 15 John went into the pit, working underground for many years and then on the pit top until his retirement in 2000 through ill-health; the colliery itself was officially "mothballed" five years later. Doubtless working in the pit contributed to his death, from pneumoconiosis, the chronic obstructive pulmonary disease caused by exposure to coal dust.

After his father's death in 1977, John quietly gave unstinting devotion over many years to his mother, Myfanwy. It was always such a pleasure to visit him and catch up on news, to natter about the past, and help finish the crossword.

His mother and his sister, Glenys, survive him.

Sea shanty singer with Port Isaac's Fisherman's Friends

Trevor Grills has died aged 54, after an accident at a concert hall in Guildford, Surrey, where he had been due to perform with the folk group Port Isaac's Fisherman's Friends. He was a self-employed builder and carpenter with a fine tenor voice who found unexpected fame in his 50s when the amateur singers he worked with were signed to a major record label in a £1m deal.

It was a fairytale story, based around the north Cornish fishing village of Port Isaac, where Grills was born, and where he spent the rest of his life; he went to the local school, and attended Sunday school at the local chapel. His father was a carpenter and builder, and Trevor took over the family business, spending much of his time renovating the old cottages in the picturesque village that were bought by outsiders as second homes. He was also a footballer, playing on the wing for the village team, and because of his burly good looks he was known to the other Fisherman's Friends as "the housewives' choice", along with his group nickname of "Toastie".

The group got together, 15 years ago, simply because they loved singing. Assembled in the village pub on a Friday night would be a group of friends who had known each other since school days, and who had gone on to become fishermen, lifeboatmen, coastguards, builders or artisans. They began to specialise in sea shanties, taking songs from Cadgwith in south-west Cornwall, where there is a strong shanty tradition, and adding in any other seafaring ballads from elsewhere in Britain and around the world, including Sloop John B and the rousing South Australia. Grills enthusiastically took part in the sessions, joining in the a cappella harmony singing, but for years he was reluctant to sing lead – although he would be acknowledged as having one of the finest voices in the group.

Steve Knightley, of the West Country folk group Show of Hands, first met Fisherman's Friends in the mid-90s, when they were rehearsing in the former Methodist chapel that is now a pottery run by their baritone singer Billy Hawkins. "They were friends for whom singing was as natural as having a beer," he says, "though they couldn't read music – they'd just find a harmony and cling on to it!" As for Grills: "He was an absolute gentleman, and the most accomplished of their singers, with a pure tenor voice. He was their star and blue-eyed boy, and they were all proud of him".

The men aimed to enjoy themselves, and never thought of becoming celebrities, but their fame gradually spread, thanks partly to Show of Hands, who invited the group to appear with them at the Royal Albert Hall in London in 2001, and join them for the recording of their song Roots. Then came the deal with Universal, the recording of a top 10 gold album, appearances at major festivals including Glastonbury, and plans for a feature film about their remarkable story, to be directed by Nigel Cole, who was responsible for Calendar Girls and Made in Dagenham.

Knightley said: "They were never corrupted by the music business. They were too rooted to be altered like that. They just loved singing and were like a bunch of kids on the road."

Grills became famous within the group for what they called his "bloody miserable songs", one of which he performed at his final London concert, at the Royal Festival Hall, when Fisherman's Friends appeared alongside Show of Hands. One of the most powerful songs of the Fisherman's Friends set that night was the lament The Last Leviathan ("I am the last of the great whales, and I am dying") with Grills powerfully taking the lead, and his nine friends lined up on either side of him adding the chorus.

Just a few days later, he suffered head injuries in an accident at the G Live concert hall, in Guildford, that also caused the death of the band's manager, Paul McMullen.

Grills is survived by his wife, Leslie, and three sons, Mark, Paul and Josh.

• Trevor Grills, singer and builder, born 2 January 1959; died 11 February 2013

Correspondent for the BBC at the height of the space race

Over the course of a long and distinguished career, the BBC journalist Reginald Turnill, who has died aged 97, chronicled the disasters, thwarted aspirations and triumphs that marked the transition from the jet age to the space era. In January 1957, soon after he joined the BBC, Turnill's assignments as assistant industrial correspondent included spending time 2,000ft underground, reporting for the Home Service (now Radio 4) from the new Bevercotes colliery in Nottinghamshire. But by October that year he was covering the launch of the Soviet Union's Sputnik 1, the world's first satellite, an event that sparked his interest in aerospace and led to his appointment as the BBC's air, space and defence correspondent.

Twelve years on, in July 1969, he was alternating between Nasa's Cape Kennedy launch site in Florida (now known as Cape Canaveral) and Mission Control in Houston, Texas. His assignment then was the Apollo 11 mission, and the landing of the first people on the moon, Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin. It was the high tide of Turnill's "moon landing years" – but his biggest story would begin later, on 13 April 1970. That evening, in Houston, Turnill had wrapped up his day's reports on the Apollo 13 moon mission and was about to leave the almost deserted press area. It was then that Fred Haise, from a distance of 204,700 miles, and heading to the moon with his fellow astronauts Jim Lovell and Jack Swigert, told Mission Control: "OK, Houston, hey, we've got a problem here." There had been an explosion in Apollo 13's oxygen tank two – the main power supply was crippled.

"This was the start of the sort of drama in space," Turnill wrote later, "that media newsdesks dreamed about." With his wife Margaret, who had accompanied him on that occasion, fielding incoming calls, he spent the next four days covering that epic of human endurance, the return to Earth of the three astronauts.

He would write that he had covered "every step in Nasa's steady progress towards launching men towards the moon" – all the US's manned space missions, together with the unmanned interplanetary voyages. His efforts included developing a working relationship with Wernher von Braun, the sometime Nazi rocket engineer who became father of the US moon programme, and whom Turnill described as "the 20th-century Faust".

It took the journalist two years to bring himself to shake his hand of the "most confident man I have ever met".

Alongside the space programme, the other great love of Turnill's career was the Anglo-French Concorde project. He told BBC listeners in 1972 that he was "astonished at the malevolent ignorance of the campaign" against the supersonic airliner, and wrote in 1994 that he considered it "one of the major achievements of the 20th century". "It was fitting," he wrote in 1994, "that Concorde first flew in 1969, paralleling the US's achievement in landing the first men on the moon."

In his youth, Turnill had been a devotee of the Victorian atheist William Winwood Reade's The Martydom of Man, and of the writings of HG Wells – whom he interviewed in the 1930s. He was, perhaps, an archetypal questioning, self-made Wellsian. He was uncomfortable with any penny-pinching by the BBC, within which, he said, he had always been regarded as "among the 'other ranks' rather than the officers".

Alongside the grand projects, Turnill's journalism took in the minutiae and grand shambles of Britain's aerospace and defence policy; the Viscount airliner's success, lukewarm reactions to the French-sponsored Airbus, the aborted rocket programme and consequent dependence on the US, the early 1970s Rolls-Royce nationalisation crisis, and interminable rows about new London airports.

Turnill was born in Dover, Kent. His father died before Reg was four, his mother remarried, and he was raised and educated – at private and state schools – in Raynes Park, south-west London. By 1930, the 15-year-old Turnill was working in Fleet Street as a Press Association news agency telephonist. After a spell as a junior reporter on the Hastings Observer, he returned to PA as a staff reporter. In 1938 he married Margaret Hennings. During the second world war, as a warrant officer-cum-journalist, he reported on the invasion of Italy and war across France, the Low Countries and Germany. In 1946 he returned to PA and remained there until joining the BBC in 1956. When the first edition of the Today programme was aired in October 1957, Turnill was on hand.

To his displeasure, he was retired by the BBC on his 60th birthday, but continued to freelance for the corporation, working with John Craven on Newsround – he had the ability to communicate with young people without condescension. Well into the 21st century, he was writing for the Guardian and other news organisations. When I last spoke to him, the indefatigable nonagenarian was still discussing outlets for his work.

His books include Moonslaught: The Full Story of Man's Race to the Moon (1969), The Language of Space (1970), Farnborough: The Story of RAE (1980), Celebrating Concorde (1994) and The Moonlandings: An Eyewitness Account (2003). In 2006 he received the Sir Arthur Clarke lifetime achievement award.

Turnill is survived by Margaret, their two sons, Graham and Michael, and two grandchildren.

• Reginald George Turnill, journalist, born 12 May 1915; died 12 February 2013

In the mid-1960s I commissioned Reginald Turnill to write and present a programme for the BBC School Radio primary geography series Exploration Earth. It was a journey over the north pole on the new transpolar passenger route. He combined this with another commission thus saving my small programme budget. His exciting but realistic account of the flight, including a commentary while flying over the pole, was exactly right for his young audience: accurate, technical and human, as his own enjoyment was clear. He also brought back a certificate from the airline confirming that he had flown over the pole, such was the novelty of the event. He was a pleasure to work with.

My mother, Helen Cunningham, who has died aged 85, was a dedicated occupational therapist in West Africa and Britain. She was also a fervent campaigner for social justice.

Helen believed that "just because life isn't fair doesn't mean that one shouldn't strive to make it fair". She did this through a lifetime of volunteering for centre-left political parties as well as active participation in both Amnesty International and Justice and Peace, including chairing its Cardiff group in 1995. She gave to charities working for refugees and the homeless, and those campaigning against animal cruelty and torture; the last cheque she wrote was for Crisis at Christmas.

This passion was, in part, formed by her father, Harold, a bank manager, who did voluntary work with underprivileged young adults; he was concerned that they were more likely to be arrested and treated more harshly than those from a privileged background. Her mother, Gertrude, taught her a love of animals and the importance of treating them humanely.

Born Helen Lewis in Hale, Manchester, she went to school in Seascale, Cumbria. After Manchester Art College, her caring and practical nature, patience and problem-solving skills led her to train as an occupational therapist at the Astley Ainslie hospital, Edinburgh, in 1945. She initially specialised in psychiatry at the Warneford hospital, Oxford, and then, in 1955, she pioneered occupational therapy at Aro psychiatric hospital in Abeokuta, Nigeria. After her return to Britain in 1962 and time in Devon, she specialised in geriatrics, retiring as head of occupational therapy at St David's hospital, Cardiff, in 1987.

Raised as a Methodist, Helen became an Anglican and later a Catholic. As befitting someone who, as a child, told her parents that men would walk on the moon in her lifetime, Helen celebrated the new and believed in progress.

She is survived by me and my sister, Ali.

My friend and fellow musician Seán McNamara, who has died after a long illness aged 84, was a revered fiddle player and a founding member of the Liverpool Céilí Band, the first English branch of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann (the Irish musicians' association) and the Liverpool Irish festival.

The fifth of six children, Seán was born in Toxteth. His father was from County Clare and there were many fiddle players in the family, including two of Seán's brothers. His mother played the piano and sang. Seán started learning the violin around the age of nine and he began playing for his two step-dancing sisters at parish concerts in prewar Liverpool.

Seán and his fellow local musicians mainly performed at dances for organisations including the Gaelic League. At 18 he met the fiddler Eamon Coyne and they began playing together regularly. While doing his national service, Seán used his free travel passes to go to County Clare in the holidays, playing at all-night house dances and building his repertoire. Seán and Eamon began playing ceilidhs in Liverpool and formed the Liverpool Céilí Band around a nucleus of local musicians.

The band made their first competitive appearance in Tipperary in 1959. They won Gaelic League competitions in 1962 and 1963, competing successfully against the legendary Kilfenora and Tulla ceilidh bands. The band progressed to win two All-Ireland titles in 1963 and 1964. Seán reflected later: "To win an All-Ireland ceilidh band competition is a great achievement but to do so twice with a band based in Britain was extra special."

They made two albums – Champions Twice and Off to Dublin – and had numerous TV and radio appearances, including Sunday Night at the London Palladium, on St Patrick's night in 1963. They went on to perform in New York and Boston.

When he retired as a customs officer, Seán devoted his time to teaching future generations of musicians in the Liverpool Irish Centre, the Willie Clancy summer school in County Clare and the Greenhouse multicultural project in Toxteth. He continued to perform and, in 2001, received a special award from Comhaltas for a lifetime's dedication to music.

Seán is survived by Brenda, whom he married in 1958, and their three daughters, Trish, Máire and Anne.

Not many entertainers are still treading the boards at 94 but my aunt Asna Wiseman was that age when she was invited back by popular demand by the Jewish Orthodox Women's Variety Show to perform in their annual showcase at Logan Hall, in London, in 2005. Asna, who has died aged 101, was the star turn and topped the bill.

She was born Asna Millie Swerdlow in Glasgow to Jewish immigrants, Alexander and Rene, and grew up in Falkner Street, Liverpool, with her five brothers, Harry, Leon, David, Matthew and Mitchell. In her early teens, Asna was a keen and talented dancer. She convinced her family that she should leave home to seek work as a professional dancer and singer; it was unusual in those days for a young girl to leave her family and the close-knit community.

Asna took the stage name Anita Lowe and soon, with the nickname The Mighty Atom, became an accomplished speciality performer touring the UK music-hall circuit of the 1920s and 30s. She appeared in a film called Variety and toured abroad; audiences loved her novelty dance routines, in which she sang in dialects to suit her costume. She's a Lassie from Lancashire, for example, was accompanied by a clog dance. Performing with the Billy Cotton Band, one of her regular venues was Liverpool's Rialto Ballroom. On one of her tours, she fell in love with, and in 1936 married, Zus Wiseman, a violinist in a concert band.

They settled in London and raised three children, Geraldine, Lionel and Michael, who have always kept their Liverpool connections. Some of Asna's career memorabilia has been retained by the new Museum of Liverpool.

In her retirement, Asna attended Jewish Care's Sinclair House centre in Redbridge each week and, after her handicraft and art class, she needed little encouragement to get up by the piano to do one of her routines and lead a sing-song. In 2011, with her message from Buckingham Palace in hand and surrounded by her family, Asna celebrated her 100th birthday at the centre. Without any prompting or accompaniment, she sang – word and note perfect – You Make Me Feel So Young, before joining in the dancing.

Zus died in 1992. Asna is survived by her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Sofie Landau, my colleague at the University of the Third Age in London (U3A), has died aged 89. She began to work in the U3A office in 1990, was soon elected to the executive committee and in 2000 became the chair, holding that office for nearly 10 years. Sofie was among the foremost of the many people who have helped to shape and maintain the particular spirit of the London U3A: collegiate, friendly, unhierarchical, unbureaucratic.

She took many classes herself and, after she stepped down from the chair, ran a class on politics and current affairs. At the same time she continued to help at the office – the last time was a week before she died.

Sofie had a highly developed sense of duty, but one never felt that she was being "dutiful": it all came so naturally to her. Many are the hospital visits she made when she knew that someone in U3A was ill and many were the funerals of U3A members that she attended.

From 1990 to 2002, she also worked as a volunteer at the Day Centre of the Association of Jewish Refugees, joining the management committee of the AJR in 1995.

She was born Sofie Marx in Neuffen, near Stuttgart, southern Germany, where her father ran a weaving factory. In 1937, she was sent to England for her education, returning to Germany in the school holidays; she was in England when the second world war broke out, and she remained there. Her parents and two brothers managed to emigrate to the US. She was married, though briefly, to Tom Landau. He was a member of the Communist-run Free German Youth, and so for some years she could not get a visa for the US to visit her family there.

I had known her since 1953, because from then until 1980 she worked as a secretary, first to my father and then to my brother, directors of the foundation garment and swimwear company Silhouette. She became the firm's export manager. From 1980 to her retirement in 1990, she worked for Dushinsky, a company making costume jewellery.

She is survived by her brother, Walter, and his family.

Writer and businessman who rejuvenated the International Wine & Food Society

Hugo Dunn-Meynell, who has died aged 86, was a businessman, writer and lover of food and wine. At a Christmas dinner in the 1940s, he met André Simon, the founder of the Wine & Food Society, which promotes good food, good wine and good company. Dunn-Meynell joined enthusiastically and became a leading member of the society.

When he retired from a career in the advertising industry in 1978, he became chairman of what had by then become the International Wine & Food Society; in the early 1980s, he was made executive director. He found a management structure in need of drastic overhaul. The organisation, which had swelled to almost 10,000 members worldwide, was in part a victim of its own success, as the burgeoning interest in eating and drinking had given rise to many competitors. Over 15 years, he guided the IWFS to safe harbours: decentralised governance, money in the bank, a loyal membership and staff, lively programmes of activity, a pleasant headquarters in Mayfair, London, and a total commitment to the highest standards.

He became a sought-after broadcaster and public speaker, and the dynamic editor of the society's journal, Food and Wine. On his retirement from managing the society in 1998, he received a bar to its gold medal for his services to gastronomy, the only person in over 70 years to be given that accolade.

Dunn-Meynell arranged for many of the society's André Simon volumes to go to the City of London reference library at Guildhall. He also presented his own collection of menus and wine catalogues, and was involved with Guildhall's acquisition of part of Elizabeth David's estate. There followed the books of the Institute of Masters of Wine and the Worshipful Company of Cooks, among contributions from other provenances, so creating a precious resource for future generations.

A member of the Circle of Wine Writers, Dunn-Meynell was equally concerned that standards of writing about food should be raised to a high professional level, and in 1984 he founded the Guild of Food Writers, now one of the largest associations of specialist authors and journalists in the world.

Born in Streatham, south London, son of Arthur Dunn and Mary Louise Meynell, Dunn-Meynell was educated at the John Fisher school in Purley, Surrey. In 1942, aged 16, he volunteered for the Royal Navy and was later drafted to the minesweeper HMS Wave, bound for the far east. The ship had to put into port frequently for supplies, and the experience awoke in him a passion for travel.

Demobbed in 1947, he studied with the Law Society, and began work with Finders Ltd, the company that introduced credit cards to Britain under licence from Diners Club. As managing director aged 26 and holding card no 00002, one of his main tasks was to bring in US dollars. He toured North America under the auspices of the British Travel and Holidays Association, becoming a polished TV and radio performer and giving press interviews. His patrician good looks (later enhanced by dextrous use of a monocle) and impeccably English voice went down well with Americans, who were encouraged to visit Britain to spend vast numbers of dollars as soon and as often as possible.

Dunn-Meynell was equally enthused by the vigour and drive of US business and its use of the new medium of television. He saw the coming of commercial TV in Britain in 1955 as an opening for his talents and experience, and two years later he joined the advertising agency Osborne Peacock as manager of their London television department. He produced more than 100 commercials at a time when the art was in its infancy; many of the earliest were transmitted live. In 1961, he started his own advertising agency, Dunn-Meynell, Keefe, and secured a wide range of accounts, from contraceptives to the Catholic Missionary Society. When Franco blockaded Gibraltar in 1969, the agency was nimble enough to successfully promote the Rock as a tourist destination.

His mother's family were of old Catholic lineage – an ancestor, Hugh de Mesnil, had accompanied the 1066 invasion – and Dunn-Meynell was an active member of the Catenian Association, the international guild of Catholic professionals and businessmen.

In 1980, he married the US writer Alice Wooledge Salmon; together they published The Wine & Food Society Menu Book (1983). She survives him, as do the three sons and daughter of his first marriage, to Nadine Denson, which ended in divorce, and three grandsons.

• Hugo Arthur Dunn-Meynell, advertising executive and gastronome, born 4 April 1926; died 6 February 2013

Swashbuckling screenwriter behind Rob Roy, Ulzana's Raid and Night Moves

Alan Sharp, who has died of brain cancer aged 79, once claimed that as a screenwriter he was most interested in "moral ambiguity, mixed motives and irony", all of which are applicable to two of his best movies, the western Ulzana's Raid (1972), directed by Robert Aldrich, and the thriller Night Moves (1975), directed by Arthur Penn. Most of his screenplays were written in the 1970s and reflect the era in which America was suffering the effects of the Vietnam war and post-Watergate paranoia. This goes some way to explaining the bleakness and cynical sense of destiny in Sharp's films, which he called "existential melodramas".

He was born in Alyth, near Dundee. Although the majority of his scripts were set in the US, where he lived for many years, Scotland remained pre-eminent in his character and culture. His script for Rob Roy (1995), a rollicking swashbuckler directed by fellow Scot Michael Caton-Jones, was loosely based on the legend of the 18th-century Scottish folk hero Robert Roy MacGregor, played with gusto by Liam Neeson.  

Sharp was somewhat of a swashbuckling type himself. Born to an unmarried mother, he was adopted by a Greenock shipyard worker and his wife, both members of the Salvation Army, when he was a few weeks old. He left school at 14 to work in the shipyards with his adoptive father.

After doing his national service, he returned to the shipyards, determined to escape as soon as possible. Already married with two daughters, he went to London with the intention of becoming a writer. It took a few years before he got a couple of scripts accepted by the BBC's teleplay series First Night and The Wednesday Play, and had his first novel published. A Green Tree in Gedde (1965), which featured an incestuous brother and sister, was banned from some public libraries in Scotland despite winning a Scottish Arts Council award. It was followed by another novel, The Wind Shifts (1967).

Sharp married for a second time and also had a relationship with the novelist Beryl Bainbridge, with whom he had a daughter, Rudi. She became the actor Ruth Davies, mostly known for playing Penny Lewis in Grange Hill. "I adored Alan, and I went through hell," Bainbridge said. "He showed up for Rudi's birth, but then went downstairs saying he was going to get a book out of the car and never came back." Sharp also had a son by another partner.

After writing a BBC Play for Today, The Long Distance Piano Player (1970), featuring Ray Davies of the Kinks, he had a feature film screenplay taken up by MGM. But The Last Run (1971), shot in Spain, was not a happy introduction to working on a Hollywood production. Three weeks into shooting, the director, John Huston, quit the picture after arguments with the film's star, George C Scott, over rewrites of Sharp's script, an entire third of which Huston had rewritten. When Huston refused to return to Sharp's original version, the producer, Carter DeHaven, threatened to fire him before he quit voluntarily, being replaced by Richard Fleischer.

Problems aside, the film turned out to be a darkly effective, slightly sententious, chase thriller, with Scott playing a retired gangster, risking a return to crime as a getaway driver, giving one of his best performances, aided by Sharp's edgy dialogue.

Sharp once explained the precepts on which he based his work: "With a screenplay, there's no point spending time describing the characters because you'll have an actor … there's also no point in describing landscapes and places … A screenplay is a blueprint. I am not a visual writer. I write dialogue and don't spend much time envisaging how things should look so I'm very sparing with camera instructions."

After Sharp submitted a strong, laconic script called The Hired Hand (1971) to Peter Fonda as an acting vehicle, Fonda decided to make it his directorial debut. The result was a slow, thoughtful western concerned with an independent woman in a man's world. Many years later, Sharp criticised Fonda's leisurely direction and over-use of stylised visuals.

He had no such reservations about Aldrich's virile direction of Ulzana's Raid, which was the favourite of his films. The strongest element in the script was the relationship between Burt Lancaster and Bruce Davison's characters on their mission to track down a murderous Apache named Ulzana. "Ain't no sense hating the Apaches for killing, lieutenant," says Lancaster. "That would be like hating the desert 'cause there ain't no water on it." Just as The Hired Hand was dubbed "a hippy western", Ulzana's Raid was seen as a revisionist western, with the Apaches standing in allegorically for the Vietcong.

Rather less effective, but likeable, was Billy Two Hats (1974), a British-financed western shot in Israel, directed by Ted Kotcheff. Gregory Peck, attempting a Scottish accent, plays a bank robber who finds himself on the run with Desi Arnaz Jr, to whom Peck says, "You're old enough to be half as stupid."

Night Moves starred Gene Hackman as a private eye on the trail of a missing person that leads him into dark territory. Penn found the right tone for Sharp's spare and bleak script. When Hackman is asked who is winning a football game on television, he replies, "Nobody. One side's just losing slower than the other." Night Moves, though not a box-office success at the time, is now considered one of the best neo-noir movies.

After the poorly received post-apocalyptic adventure Damnation Alley (1977), Sharp spent time on a series of unfilmed scripts and uncredited rewrites (including The Year of Living Dangerously, 1983) before linking up with Sam Peckinpah for The Osterman Weekend (1983), which turned out to be the director's final film. Adapted from Robert Ludlum's bestseller, it was another portentous conspiracy drama suffering from a Nixonian hangover. Tortuous as Sharp's screenplay was, Peckinpah's direction did little to illuminate it. However, in interviews, Peckinpah complained that the movie was re-edited after he had turned it over to 20th Century Fox.

In 1985, Sharp decided to try his hand at directing. Little Treasure, which he also wrote, was a lively adventure story shot in Mexico and starring Margot Kidder as a loud-mouthed stripper and Lancaster (in his third picture with Sharp) as her ailing father. 

Sharp then disappeared into the relatively more anonymous ranks of television writers where there is less at stake. But after 10 years away from feature films, he was tempted back to write Rob Roy, an enjoyable epic filmed in Scotland. However, his long-cherished dream of making a film about Robert Burns, with whose "sexual adventures" Sharp identified, remained unfulfilled.

He was to write one further screenplay, Dean Spanley (2008), based on Lord Dunsany's novella set in Edwardian England. The well received comic-drama, directed by Toa Fraser, and starring Peter O'Toole, was partly shot in New Zealand, where the globetrotting Sharp (who had homes in Los Angeles, New Zealand and the Scottish Highlands) was living at the time.

He is survived by Harriet, to whom he was married for more than 30 years, and his six children.

• Alan Sharp, screenwriter, born 12 January 1934; died 8 February 2013

Brilliant philosopher of law who put human dignity at the centre of his moral system

Ronald Dworkin, who has died aged 81, was widely respected as the most original and powerful philosopher of law in the English-speaking world. In his books, his articles and his teaching, in London and New York, he developed a powerful, scholarly exegesis of the law, and expounded issues of burning topicality and public concern – including how the law should deal with race, abortion, euthanasia and equality – in ways that were accessible to lay readers. His legal arguments were subtly presented applications to specific problems of a classic liberal philosophy which, in turn, was grounded in his belief that law must take its authority from what ordinary people would recognise as moral virtue.

Dworkin studied philosophy (under Willard Van Orman Quine at Harvard University and, informally, with JL Austin at Oxford University) and law at both Oxford and the Harvard Law School. He worked as clerk to the great US judge and legal scholar Billings Learned Hand and as a practising associate in the Wall Street law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, before teaching law at the Yale and later the New York University law schools, as well as at Oxford and later University College London.

This broad education and training, sharpening the analytical skills of a quite exceptionally powerful intellect, enabled him, even as a precocious young man, to challenge the most eminent figures in the world of law and jurisprudence, including Hand and HLA Hart, the renowned exponent of legal positivism – considering the social basis of a law separately from its merits – at Oxford. Perhaps Dworkin's greatest achievement was his insistence on a rights-based theory of law, expounded in his first and most influential book, Taking Rights Seriously (1977), in which he proposed an alternative both to Hart's outlook and to the newly minted theories of the Harvard philosopher of law John Rawls.

Dworkin spent much of his life in legal and philosophical controversy, in which he proved himself a capable and sometimes acerbic champion, defending his ideas with a sharpness that could surprise those who knew him personally as a gentle and affectionate man. He remained an unapologetic, indeed proud, liberal Democrat, unshaken in his loyalty to the New Deal tradition set by his hero Franklin D Roosevelt, even as such ideas became less and less widely held. It is possible that this shifting of the political centre of gravity under him deprived him of a more prominent career as a public intellectual. Within his own field, where law and philosophy meet, his reputation was unsurpassed, and almost unrivalled.

He was challenged technically within that field by the exponents of other doctrines, for example by the partisans of Hart, of Rawls and of Richard Rorty. He was more bitterly derided on political and ideological grounds by conservative legal scholars such as Robert Bork, with whom – improbably – he taught a joint course at the Yale Law School in the 60s. Throughout all these intellectual jousts, Dworkin was ever ready to break a lance, and gave at least as good as he got.

He chose to divide his life almost equally between Britain and the US, with a townhouse in London and an unusual 19th-century mews cottage just off Washington Square in New York, as well as a third home, on the island of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, where he enjoyed sailing.

For a man who contrived, through sheer intellectual brilliance and a formidable capacity for work, to be both a consummate scholar's scholar and a lawyer's lawyer, Dworkin could give the impression of something not far from indolence. He loved company, talk, good food and drink, music, including opera, and travel, and moved easily through the different societies of New York and Martha's Vineyard, Oxford and London. Friends and family were more important to him than society, however, and work perhaps ultimately, in spite of his apparently self-indulgent lifestyle, more important than either.

Dworkin was born in Worcester, Massachusetts. His parents, David and Madeline (nee Talamo) separated when he was a baby, and his mother, a promising concert pianist, worked as a music teacher in Providence, Rhode Island, to support Ronald and his brother and sister. He went to a public school in Providence with a classical tradition, and won a scholarship to Harvard, where he achieved straight As in all his four years' classes.

Dworkin arrived as a Rhodes scholar at Magdalen College, Oxford, with a formidable reputation. Dons all but bowed before his record. He chose to read law, but he hung out with philosophers. (He also played a lot of bridge, much of it with his lifelong friend Guido Calabresi, later dean of the Yale Law School and an appeal court judge in Connecticut, New York and Vermont.) His Oxford finals papers were as impeccable as the Harvard ones: straight alphas, after straight As. His two years at Oxford finished, he went back to Harvard, this time to read law. The law school gave him credit for his Oxford degree, so there were areas of the law (including criminal law) he never studied.

The conventional start to a brilliant legal career in the US is to work as a clerk to a leading judge. In 1957 Dworkin, on the basis of his exceptional record at Harvard, was chosen to clerk for Judge Learned Hand, then in his late 80s and the most eminent judge in the land outside the supreme court. Often Hand's clerks went on to work for Justice Felix Frankfurter, and were made for life.

Hand explained that he did not need Dworkin to draft opinions for him: "I don't know how you write," the great man said. "I write very well." He asked him instead to read what he had written. This led immediately to a difference of opinion. Hand was writing a series of Oliver Wendell Holmes lectures for Harvard in which he questioned whether the Brown case (Brown v School Board, in which the supreme court, in 1954, held for the first time that racially segregated education was necessarily unconstitutional) had been wrongly decided. Dworkin bravely challenged Hand to say publicly that Brown was wrong.

While he was working for Hand, Dworkin met his future wife Betsy Ross, the daughter of a successful businessman from the New York garment district who lived on Fifth Avenue. On one of their first dates, Dworkin told her that he had to drop off a document at the judge's house and asked her to come with him, saying it would take only a second. Learned Hand opened the door and pressed the young people to come in. He mixed dry martinis and talked to them for two hours. As they left walking down the steps from the front door, Betsy asked: "If I see more of you, do I get to see more of him?" They were married in 1958.

Dworkin was duly offered the chance of clerking for Frankfurter, who was famous not only for his astute legal scholarship but also for the skill with which he promoted his proteges' careers. Instead, he took up an offer to work for Sullivan & Cromwell. One of his clients was the Swedish Wallenberg family and he had to spend a lot of time in Stockholm.

It was not long before Betsy objected to the amount of time her new husband spent travelling. She sent him a telegram saying that in a year he would have to get a new job or a new wife. Dworkin left the law firm and got a job teaching at Oxford. For a time the couple lived in the Oxfordshire countryside, but that was not the natural habitat for an elegant New Yorker like Betsy. Instead, they bought a house in Belgravia and Dworkin travelled to Oxford from the nearby Victoria coach station, leaving the bus outside University College, where he had his teaching rooms.

In 1961, Betsy had twins, Anthony, who now works on human rights and democracy at the European Council on Foreign Relations thinktank, and Jennifer, an award-winning documentary film producer. In the same year, Dworkin was made a professor at the Yale Law School, and also master of one of the Yale residential colleges, Trumbull. It fell to him in the late 60s to have to deal with the student unrest. Dworkin left Yale and became a professor at the New York University Law School. Arthur Schlesinger persuaded him that he would be happier in New York than at either Harvard or Yale. "New York is for grownups," the historian said gnomically.

Hart, who had been one of Dworkin's examiners at Oxford, was by then approaching retirement, and in 1969 he was able to persuade the Oxford law faculty to appoint Dworkin as his successor as professor of jurisprudence. As with Hand, Dworkin had learned from an older man, then crossed swords with him intellectually, but remained on good terms with him. He stayed in the post until 1998. Eventually, he accepted a chair in jurisprudence at University College London, perhaps on the principle that London, too, was for grownups.

His books were immensely influential, especially in US law schools. He published many articles both in technical law journals and also in the New York Review of Books, none more important than his critique in several articles in 1977 and 1978 of the supreme court's inconclusive decision of the Regents of the University of California v Bakke case, which arose out of widespread dissatisfaction with "affirmative action", or positive discrimination. Dworkin had by then already completed Taking Rights Seriously, in which he attacked legal positivism of the kind espoused by Hart, and elevated rights above formal law, at least in some hard cases. "If the issue is one touching fundamental personal or political rights," he wrote, "and it is arguable that the supreme court has made a mistake, a man is within his social rights in refusing to accept that decision as conclusive."

If one can dare to summarise so rich and lucid a lifetime's argument, Dworkin rejected both the traditional view, that judges must conform to established authority, and the belief of American liberals, that judges should seek to improve society, with a new emphasis on the judge's responsibility to uphold individual and collective morality.

After that came A Matter of Principle (1985), about the sources of law, and Law's Empire (1986), a full-dress theory of law. In Life's Dominion (1993) he tried characteristically to find common ground on abortion between pro-life and pro-choice forces in a common respect for human life. "Combatants and commentators alike talk as if the abortion controversy was about the rights and interests of a foetus ... liberals and conservatives, Catholics and feminists, actually argue about how and why human life has intrinsic value. This contradicts the pessimistic conclusion that accommodation is impossible." In Sovereign Virtue (2000), he wrestled with alternative views of equality, and in Justice in Robes (2006), he returned to a lifelong fascination with judges and the nature of adjudication.

Dworkin was always aware that law and in particular adjudication were, as he once put it, "a branch of morality". In 2011 he published Justice for Hedgehogs, an extended essay on this insight. The title was a reference to Isaiah Berlin's famous distinction between those intellectuals who, like the fox, have many ideas, and those who have "one big idea". Dworkin's big idea was to put human dignity at the centre of his moral system, for judges and for others. "If we manage to lead a good life," he wrote, "we make our lives tiny diamonds in the cosmic sands."

In 2000, Betsy died of cancer. Dworkin formed a close friendship with Irene Brendel, wife of the pianist Alfred Brendel, and they later married. He is survived by Irene, Anthony and Jennifer, and two grandchildren.

• Ronald Myles Dworkin, philosopher of law, born 11 December 1931; died 14 February 2013

When Peggy O'Neill, who has died aged 79, arrived in the world with physical and intellectual disabilities, she was given a life expectancy of 12 years. She was born at a time when little understanding, support or education existed for people with a learning disability.

Peggy was a spirited and vivacious child growing up in Dublin. Hers was a loving family; she was the third of four children of Laurence (Lar) and May (nee Gibney), veterans of the Irish war of independence and the Irish civil war. As she had difficulty walking and was in callipers for several years, Peggy was largely confined to the family home, though her mother took her out walking regularly to strengthen her legs.

Although her speech had little sentence structure, she used her small vocabulary with great intelligence and an acute comic timing, so much so that the family coined the phrase "Peggyisms". As her three siblings married and had families, she became a magic figure for her nieces and nephews, who delighted in her cheeky and roguish behaviour.

By the time Peggy was 40, her father had died and her mother was finding it hard to manage her needs; Sally, Peggy's sister, began a search for a new home for her. This led in 1975 to the recently founded Camphill Village community at Duffcarrig in North Wexford. Camphill maintains communities together with people with disabilities, and Duffcarrig was the first village to be established in the Republic of Ireland.

There Peggy blossomed, becoming a competent store-keeper, laundry and home-help, and loved living with the young children in the house. With her strong work ethic she ruled the kitchen. Peggy liked drama in life and despite her raucous laugh and almost military direction of others, was much loved for her talent to entertain. Sally, an artist, helped Peggy to explore her skills as a painter. She had a love of tasteful clothes and many friends. I had the privilege of living as a carer with Peggy for her last three months.

Peggy is survived by her brother Con, and by four nephews and six nieces.

My uncle Brian Langford, who has died aged 77, was a cricketing legend in Somerset. He made his debut at the age of 17, and played for the county from 1953 to 1974.

Born in Birmingham, Brian moved at the age of four to Bridgwater, where his love affair with Somerset began. Having attended the town's Dr Morgan's school, Brian was signed by Somerset county cricket club as a schoolboy and was soon making headlines with his inventive bowling. In just his second match, against Kent, he took 8 for 96 and 6 for 41 to become the youngest player in history to take 10 wickets in a match (a record unbroken until 2007). He once took 15 wickets for just 54 runs in a game against Lancashire in 1958 and, famously, in 1969 bowled his eight overs in a 40-over Sunday League match at Yeovil without conceding a single run.

Having gained his county cap in 1957, Brian regularly took more than 100 wickets a season with his clever off-spin. He was captain from 1969 to 1971, and by the time he retired from playing at the end of 1974, his career tally of 1,390 placed him third in the list of the county's wicket-takers. Indeed, perhaps the only thing missing from Brian's otherwise stellar cricket CV was an England cap; it was the abundance of talented spinners during the peak years of his career that prevented him from gaining the international recognition he merited. In 1986 Brian became cricket committee chairman of the club he loved so much and was made an honorary life member.

With his playing days over, Brian began working for Barclaycard and also indulged in his passion for sport. Though cricket was his first love and he could often be spotted at the county ground, he also played golf to a very high standard and was latterly a member at Taunton and Pickeridge golf club. He was a lifelong supporter of Aston Villa football club. As a youth, while his Villa-supporting friends would watch Birmingham when Villa were playing away, Brian would always go to watch Villa reserves.

Put simply, Brian was one of life's good guys. A charming, kind and charismatic man, he was always the person you wanted to be seated next to at a social function. A natural raconteur and teller of often terrible jokes, he had a knack of making you laugh, even if you knew only too well where a particular story was headed, his West Country drawl delivering line after deadly line.

Brian is survived by his wife, Mo, and her son Paul and his family, to whom Brian was devoted.

When my father, Alick Smithers, who has died at the age of 87, moved our family from London to Stoke-on-Trent in 1968 to take up a job promotion, he was fascinated and intrigued by what he described as "a very gritty industrial city". An industrial designer, he made the area his home for 40 years, working in senior design management roles for the UK's two biggest pottery manufacturers – Wedgwood and Royal Doulton.

He devoted his retirement to saving the relics of the industrial past of Stoke-on-Trent – and in particular the pot-bellied brick "bottle ovens", which had numbered more than 2,000 in their 19th-century heyday. As chairman of the Potteries Heritage Society and then secretary of the Potteries Preservation Trust, he worked tirelessly to restore the final 10 "at risk" structures. In 1999 he secured nearly £500,000 of grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund for this purpose.

Born in Edgware, north London, Alick shone at art at grammar school and won a place to study at the Royal College of Art, which he deferred while he did second world war service with the Royal Navy. After graduating from the RCA school of graphic design with a silver medal in 1951, Alick worked on the Festival of Britain South Bank exhibition. At the end of the war he married Betty – also an RCA graduate whom he had met at Willesden School of Art – and they went on to have four children.

Early family life was in West Hampstead, where our household was a riot of creativity and fun, and anything but ordinary. We never had a conventional Christmas tree – ours were chicken-wire pyramids stuffed with white tissue paper and lit from inside, or towers of painted cardboard boxes. Homemade Christmas cards featured our parents' distinctive – and often irreverent – sketches.

In 1956 Alick joined the staff of Wedgwood in London and set up its trailblazing exhibition and display department. Over the next 10 years, he led and designed the groundbreaking "Wedgwood Rooms" programme – collaborations with major retailers which after postwar austerity brought Wedgwood's ware to shoppers and set new standards for retail display. Promoted to group design co-ordinator, he presided over one of the most creative periods in Wedgwood's history.

In 1981 he joined the rival Royal Doulton Tableware as design manager, in charge of the group's retail display, exhibition, packaging and corporate design. Even at the end of a stellar career he was modest about his achievements, and after taking early retirement in 1987 he continued to be active in professional and vocational design education.

The Guardian was Alick's newspaper of choice for more than 50 years as it reflected his diverse interests and political views. He was featured in its pages in 2000 when, after agreeing to support the Liberal Democrats in a local election as a "placeholder" candidate, he found his name on the ballot paper when he went to vote. He came a respectable third.

Alick was a king of DIY and single-handedly renovated three family homes – and my own. He was "green" before the term was coined: cereal boxes were flattened and cut up to be used for endless lists, while he perfected the art of packing the dishwasher in the most efficient way. He was a founding subscriber to Which? and would never buy a household gadget without consulting it.

Our parents enjoyed later life in the Potteries village of Penkhull – where Alick is still remembered for his weekly "litter pick" – and moved to Suffolk six years ago where they relished the music, arts and proximity to their grandchildren.

Betty died in 2008. Alick is survived by my three brothers, Christopher, Andrew and Matthew, and myself; and five grandchildren.

My mother, Stephanie Park, who has died aged 72, was a nurse and a senior midwife from Wakefield, West Yorkshire, who became a disability rights campaigner, a world disabled target-shooting champion and great patron of sport.

She lost her leg in 1981, after suffering from complications related to thrombosis, following a car accident in the 1970s. This transformed her life. She set up Dial (Disability Information Advice Line) in Wakefield in 1983 with her friend Sylvia Lockwood and the service really took off, empowering previously marginalised people.

She also gained a passion for sport following the accident and went on to become the world disabled champion in target shooting (.177 rifle) in 1987 and the winner of the Cardiff Open Shoot in 1989. This was the first sports event in which disabled and non-disabled competitors took part equally. She was also a world champion athlete in field sports and archery.

A community activist, Stephanie passionately believed that disabled people should not just get rights and benefits, but should have the courage and opportunities to achieve higher things for themselves; and that is why she moved her considerable energy and enthusiasm into sports. She was an adviser for the Sports Aid Foundation during the 1990s. As part of her role, she helped many athletes who participated in the Olympic and Paralympics games in London in 2012.

She was born Stephanie Hopley in Goole, east Yorkshire, went to school at Goole grammar school and trained as a nurse in York – nicknamed "Hoppy", she was a high-spirited student who was once banned from the city's Mount pub for dancing on the tables. She married Geoff Park in 1968, and she became a district nurse in Wakefield in the 1960s and 70s, and eventually a senior midwife, responsible for the maternity units at night, at Pontefract General Infirmary's maternity unit. As a little boy, I remember singing Christmas carols around the incubators at the hospital and helping to make stuffed toys for the babies born there.

I also recall the two of us holding collection tins raising money for the BPSA, of which she was the secretary for many years. One man putting money into her tin asked what BPSA stood for. Mum proudly said: "The British Paraplegic Shooting Association." "What?" the man replied, incredulously. "You shoot paraplegics?"

Stephanie retired due to ill health in 1981. After Geoff's death in 1997, I found a job nearby so I could look after her, as her care needs were becoming more severe. But I never had to worry about her being alone while I was at work because she knew so many people that there was always someone keeping her company. She brought sunshine into the lives of all who knew her.

She is survived by myself and by her brother, Rodney.

I first heard John Carol Case perform when he gave a recital of English songs at the first Portsmouth festival in 1971. It was immediately clear to everyone who heard him that John was a remarkable artist, whose outstanding voice and highly sensitive treatment of texts were fully comparable with the finest lieder singers of the age.

He visited the festival again the following year to sing a Bach cantata and the Fauré Requiem with us, and in 1973 performed with me the greatest of all song-cycles, Schubert's Winterreise. In that year he also sang Vaughan Williams's Dona Nobis Pacem, and in 1974 repeated that work, shortly after recording it with Sir Adrian Boult, on the Portsmouth Festival Choir's visit to Duisburg in Germany, in what we afterwards learned was the first performance of the work in that country.

He decided to retire – inexplicably to us all – in 1976, when he was still only just over 50, his voice as fine as ever, and gave his last recital with me. The programme included three of Vaughan Williams's Five Mystical Songs, and was notable, above all, for his masterly performance of RVW's Songs of Travel.