My husband, George Spenceley, who has died aged 91, was a climber, photographer and lecturer.

In 1955-56, he was a member of a survey expedition to Antarctic South Georgia, where the Spenceley glacier was named after him. In 1957 during an expedition in the Jugal Himal of Nepal he was the sole survivor of an avalanche.

He was born in Harrogate, North Yorkshire. When George was a small boy, his father took him up Ingleborough, one of the highest mountains in the Dales. He pointed out some tents far below that belonged to members of the Yorkshire Ramblers Club and told George that one day he would be a member. George joined the club soon after the outbreak of the second world war, then a recently qualified RAF pilot.

After more than 40 wartime operations, he was shot down in 1942, in one of the early 1,000-plane raids over Germany. He spent several weeks in hospital, then three years as a prisoner of war. Returning home in 1945, he married Marjorie, with whom he had three sons, Julian, Adrian and Nicholas.

He became a geography teacher, but also continued walking, climbing and exploring, and turned his adventures into illustrated talks for schools and societies all over Britain.

After his divorce from Marjorie, we married in 1977 and settled in Oxfordshire. George continued his successful career as a lecturer, mainly during the winter months between September and April. Together we canoed the full length of the river Danube in 1979-80, followed by the Mississippi in 1984. At the age of 84, George became the oldest man to reach the Annapurna Sanctuary in the Himalayas.

He is survived by me and his sons.

My wife, Alison Hunter, who has died of heart failure aged 57, was a remarkable woman from a remarkable family. Alison was a wheelchair user from early childhood who went on to establish a successful career in teaching, to live independently and to marry and have children. She overcame the good intentions as well as the prejudices of the times in which she lived.

When you knew Alison, the wheelchair wasn't there. It vanished in the glow of her vitality, intellect and sense of fun. She was born in Wallsend, Newcastle upon Tyne. In her formative years during the 1960s and 70s, negativity and ignorance surrounding disability were deeply rooted. Her independence, integrity and strength of character rested on the love and determination of her parents, Evelyn and Les, who undertook many battles with medical and local authority services to have their daughter treated as she should be.

Of course, there were champions, such as the visionary paediatrician Christine Cooper and Newcastle local education authority, which was beginning to take the lead in provision for children with disabilities. Alison became a pupil at Pendower special school in Newcastle and later Walbottle high, before training as a teacher at Ponteland College of Education.

In 1977 Alison began teaching in Newcastle, at Broadwood junior school and later Atkinson Road primary, where she married the boss (that was me). As a teacher, she was exceptional. She was simply a "natural" who knew her children inside out and made learning exciting as well as relevant. As a wheelchair user, she demonstrated every day to children and colleagues that everyone could succeed – with the right attitude, determination and a little consideration.

Alison was employed by the local authority and universities as an exemplary practitioner and expert in the education of young children. She was a wonderful example to all and a true intellectual unafraid of challenging the status quo.

In her life she achieved so much, often in the face of harsh challenges. The death of our daughter, stillborn 20 years ago, left a deep wound. But the pleasure of her friends and family, our life in the village of Stamfordham in rural Northumberland, and the joy of raising our son, Josh, made it all worthwhile.

She is survived by me, Josh, her parents and her sister, Lesley.

Raymond Cusick worked first as a scenic artist and then as a scenic designer for the Peter Haddon Company while they performed weekly repertory at Wimbledon theatre, south-west London, from 1955 to 1963 – more than 330 productions.

Lucky enough to be helping out with the scene painting as a callow art student during my summer holidays in 1958 and 1959, I was shown how to use a broad brush, how to paint trompe l'oeil skirtings, architraves and door panels, and how to handle 20ft-tall canvas flats which were painted backstage while the cast for next week's play rehearsed the script.

The current play's set was struck after second house on Saturday night and the stage was cleared. On Monday morning, the new play's set was built ready for the afternoon's dress rehearsal, after which came the evening performance – the first of the week's eight performances. On Tuesday morning, preparations began for the next week's play with cast read-through, set design and preparation.

Such was the relentless rhythm of weekly repertory. It was made possible only by a professional and co-ordinated team. Raymond was relaxed and unflappable throughout, with a gently ironic humour. He was a generous mentor. Happy days.

My mother, Maureen Taylor, has died aged 90. Feisty and intelligent, energetic and argumentative, she was a leading figure in Labour party politics in the north-east for several decades. In the 1970s she was chair of the North of England Development Council, charged with bringing industrial investment and jobs to the region. She also took the helm on major committees on Teesside borough council and Cleveland county council.

Maureen began her political career in the late 1940s in County Durham, as one of the youngest councillors on the old Billingham urban district council. She was a leading member of the group responsible for the development of postwar Billingham, including the town centre and the Forum sports and leisure complex, as well as the Forum theatre, which was close to her heart. This was all to be a lively, cultural, business and shopping centre, where people, not profits, were a key part of the vision. The Billingham International Folklore festival, which began in 1965, was an important part of that vision and Maureen chaired the festival for a number of years.

Her life centred on family, faith and principles. Her socialism grew from Irish-Catholic working-class roots, lasting memories of poverty during the depression of the 1930s and a conviction that a better society was possible.

She was born Maureen O'Connell in Haverton Hill, Durham, went to school at Newlands convent school in Middlesbrough and had early ambitions to be a teacher. Instead, after leaving school she worked in various clerical positions at ICI Billingham. She married Jack Taylor in 1953, and they went on to have three sons, Niall, Sean and me.

In the late 1960s she was part of the Labour group responsible for authorising the demolition of housing in Haverton Hill – "the place where even the birds coughed" – and the relocation of it residents. Various scientific studies had been commissioned and she believed that demolition was the right option, even though it was clear that she would suffer at the polls. Defeat at the next election followed, but she bounced back.

I always remember my mum's sense of fairness. As a child of about five I returned home from the ice-cream van having been shortchanged. Looking out of the window, Mum saw that the van had disappeared up the street and round the corner. She dashed next door, borrowed a bicycle and gave chase, returning shortly afterwards with the missing money.

Jack died in 2011; Maureen is survived by her sons, and a granddaughter, Catherine.

In his admirable obituary of Guglielmo Galvin, Martin Plimmer dates the start of Gil's career as a photographer to his 40s. But when Gil and I, in our mid-20s, took over the lease on a rambling flat in an Edwardian block in Bloomsbury, central London, he already had his first beloved Hasselblad, and Patsy, whom he later married, was modelling for him.

On our first night in residence, Gil offered to do the washing up. A minute or two later, he joined me in front of the TV, which seemed odd. About an hour after that, there was a ring at the door. Our neighbour from downstairs, who turned out to be a Nobel laureate, had water coming through her ceiling. Gil, with his habit of overlooking the less important things in life, had simply turned the tap on in the sink and left it running. It took all his charisma, and a lot of mopping, to restore relations.

Alan Thompson writes: I worked with Kenny Ball on a number of occasions. One programme I co-produced was Kenny's Personal Choice from Bristol which was broadcast by Radio 2 in 1991. Kenny told me once, in an interview recorded at a 60s festival, that he owed much of his success to Lonnie Donegan at Pye Records and that although he and his band had recorded a version of Hello, Dolly! no one could match the version by Louis Armstrong. That was Kenny – appreciative and modest about his achievements.

Mervyn Leah writes: In 1964, Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen were booked to appear at Leeds University with Sonny Boy Williamson II (aka Rice Miller), one of the American musicians who inspired the British blues boom. Sonny Boy had never worked with Ball's band and there had clearly been no rehearsals either, nor even an agreed running order. Before he was due on stage, Sonny Boy held court with a group of admiring students, telling tales about his colourful life and giving inpromptu performances on his harmonica. Envoys from the band came and went, but got nothing out of him.

The band went on first and played a string of their standard material. Then Sonny Boy shuffled up to the front of the stage and launched into a flawless performance, exchanging a few words with Kenny at the start of each number. This was sheer professional musicianship at work – and nothing whatever to do with planning or rehearsal.

Bruce Millan was that rarity among the ministerial class: a secretary of state (for Scotland) who could not be wrong-footed on the finer detail of a Scottish Office budget, down to the minutiae of the complex Barnett formula, which determines how much Scotland gets from the UK cake. Calm, understated, a politician of conviction, he was widely admired as someone whose grasp of detail put him on an equal footing with the most senior civil servants.

When I asked Donald Dewar, father of the Scottish parliament – and a later Scottish secretary – which politician he most admired as a a senior minister, he had no hesitation in replying: "Bruce Millan". When I accompanied Bruce from Brussels to Germany and France for a BBC Scotland radio documentary (by then he was a very effective EU regional affairs commissioner), it soon became clear to me why colleagues labelled him "quietly impressive". His grasp of EU detail confounded senior aides.

Roger Morton writes: I remember a broadcast interview with the radio announcer Patricia Hughes a few years after she had retired in which she told a story worth preserving. She described how life had become difficult for her when Radio 3 decided to promote "contemporary" music more energetically. They commissioned a series of new works and paid composers by the minute, resulting in their creations becoming ever longer and more repetitive. This taxed the concentration of the continuity announcers. When one such programme ended with time to spare before the next, she said: "As there is a little time in hand before the next programme, let's have some music", and then played something from the mainstream classical repertoire. She was called into her boss the next day but had already given notice of retirement.

Margaret Jacobi writes: I was a student when I got to know the voice of Patricia Hughes. She had the ability to make you feel as if she was talking to you personally, as a friend. Though she might have sounded upper class, she never felt distant. She also generated a sense that she knew and loved the music, whatever her formal qualifications in the field. I have a very fond memory of the farewell sung to her by the Songmakers' Almanac at the last concert she announced, which reflected the ensemble's affection and respect for her.

My friend Margaret Harker, who has died aged 93, had a long association with the Royal Photographic Society and, from 1958 to 1960, served as its first female president. Margaret was the first female professor of photography in the UK. A distinguished photographic historian, she was instrumental in the development of photographic education.

She was born Margaret Florence Harker in Southport. Her father was a doctor and a photography enthusiast and, with her parents' support, she moved to London to study photography at the Regent Street Polytechnic (now the University of Westminster) between 1940 and 1943. She began to work as an architectural photographer, contributing to the National Buildings Record from its establishment in 1941. More than 1,000 of her negatives are held in its successor body at English Heritage.

Margaret started lecturing at the Regent Street Polytechnic's School of Photography from 1943. She became head in 1959 and was responsible for the introduction of the first degree courses in photography in the UK – a BSc in photographic science in 1967 and a BA in the photographic arts in 1972. She was appointed professor in 1972.

Joining the Royal Photographic Society in 1941, she served on its council from 1951 to 1976 and chaired the applied photographic distinction panel, assessing work to be awarded distinctions from the society, from 1951 until 1992. Interested in photographic history, she became honorary curator of the society's collection of historic photographs. This led to her books The Linked Ring: The Secession Movement in Photography, 1892-1910 (published in 1979) and Henry Peach Robinson, Master of Photographic Art, 1830-1901 (published in 1988).

Margaret was a governor at the London College of Printing and a trustee at the Photographers' Gallery. The National Museum of Photography, Film and Television (now the National Media Museum), in Bradford, asked her to serve as a member of its advisory committee, which she did from 1983 to 1997.

Although Margaret at times could appear formidable, she was a kind and generous person. She had a wicked sense of humour and a very sprightly mind. By the 1980s, as work pressures reduced, she was more relaxed and informal – especially so when entertaining at her home and beautiful garden in Sussex.

Margaret married Richard Farrand in 1972. He died in 1982.

My husband, Ronnie Marsh, who has died aged 92, had an excellent nose for what was good or bad in television drama. In 1955 he was recruited as an assistant floor manager in the BBC's light entertainment department. He progressed rapidly through the ranks, becoming a producer, with credits including the series My Pal Bob, What's My Line?, The Charlie Drake Show and Dixon of Dock Green, on which he had a long stint. It was during this formative period that we met in a caravan-cum-office in the car park of the newly completed scenery wing of Television Centre, in west London. We married in 1962.

In 1970, after a short spell as head of staff training, he was appointed head of drama serials. There, he was responsible for many Doctor Who episodes in the Jon Pertwee era, as well as War and Peace, The Lotus Eaters, Don't Forget to Write and The Brothers. Becoming head of drama series, he worked on programmes such as When the Boat Comes In, Wings, Secret Army, Blake's 7 and The Onedin Line.

His stewardship was remembered for his refusal to allow the broadcasting of expletives: Ronnie would intervene in production when he thought the show was getting close to "dangerous ground". In 1979, the departments of serials and series merged, and following a spell as special assistant to Shaun Sutton, he became drama representative in co-productions, negotiating international deals prior to his retirement in 1989.

Ronnie was born in London. Upon leaving school in Croydon, he briefly worked for a firm of Lloyd's brokers before being called for air crew training in the RAF. He was commissioned in South Africa as an air observer, and on his return started a love affair with the Mosquito – "the wooden wonder". At the drop of a hat, he would recount the thrills of low-level flights, but as to how and why he was awarded the DFC he remained resolutely reticent.

We had a rich cultural life together, especially enjoying ballet productions at the Royal Opera House. Ronnie was a modest and forthright man who upheld the qualities upon which the BBC established its reputation. He was also a patron of the New Era Academy and was made a Lord's Taverner.

Ronnie is survived by me and a niece, Marsha.

One of the German officers who plotted to assassinate Adolf Hitler in July 1944

Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist, who has died aged 90, was thought to be the last survivor of the abortive July 1944 plot by mainly aristocratic German army officers to assassinate Adolf Hitler, once it had become clear to them that Germany would lose the second world war.

Kleist, an infantry officer, had been recruited by the ringleader of the plotters, Count Claus von Stauffenberg, six months earlier to attempt to kill the dictator by suicide bomb. Kleist's unit had been earmarked to display newly redesigned military uniforms to Hitler, and the original volunteer for the attempt had been wounded. Kleist agreed to wear a waistcoat packed with explosive under his tunic – but the parade was called off when Hitler made one of his many abrupt changes of schedule, often prompted by fears for his own safety.

Kleist was descended from a prominent Prussian military family and was born at the family seat in Schmenzin, Pomerania, now part of Poland. His family tree included two field marshals and one of Germany's most distinguished writers. His father, the lawyer and conservative politician Ewald von Kleist-Schmenzin, was a convinced anti-Nazi even before Hitler came to power in 1933. Prominent military anti-Nazis, including Admiral Wilhelm Canaris and General Ludwig Beck, sent him secretly to London in 1938 to plead in vain with British authorities to abandon the policy of appeasement. The elder Kleist returned to Germany and kept up his opposition to the regime, eventually making his way into the inner circle of the bomb plot led by Stauffenberg.

A substantial minority of officers always saw themselves as loyal to Germany rather than its leader, and looked for ways of bringing down the Nazis from their earliest days in power. Discontent grew as the war progressed, and increased sharply after the setbacks over 1942-43 at Stalingrad and in north Africa, the turning points in the conflict.

When Stauffenberg failed to win over Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, Hitler's greatest general, he took matters into his own hands. He had been made responsible as a staff officer for the plans for operation Valkyrie, to take over key Berlin installations in the event of a revolt by the mass of foreign forced labour working in the region round the city. This legitimate if paranoid contingency plan was seen as the perfect cover for a post-assassination coup.

On 20 July 1944, Stauffenberg placed a bomb under the table at Hitler's headquarters in east Prussia. It exploded, but although others were killed Hitler survived. By the time Stauffenberg flew into Berlin, Hitler's survival was known, and the colonel was arrested and summarily shot. Kleist senior was one of many thousands of other suspects arrested within days. He was condemned to death at one of a series of show trials in February 1945 and was executed in Berlin that April.

Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist was luckier than his father, whose hostility to Hitler he fully shared from his teens. He joined the army in 1940 at the age of 18 and became a lieutenant in an infantry regiment. As such, he was one of many members of a loosely connected and mostly passive resistance to the Nazi regime who were also members of the old Prussian aristocracy, reluctantly serving in the Wehrmacht and the civil service, notably the foreign office.

In July 1944, he was one of many officers standing by at the Berlin headquarters of the home army for the go-ahead to take over key points in the city on receipt of the confirmation that Hitler was dead. The plan was to confine, neutralise or if need be overcome by force SS and other loyalist forces. Much depended on the attitude of General Friedrich Fromm, commanding the home army, who hesitantly sympathised with the resistance, but turned against it when the assassination attempt failed. Fromm's arrests of the main plotters, and Beck's suicide on his urging, failed to save him; he was executed in March 1945.

Kleist was among those arrested. He was subjected to Gestapo interrogation before being sent to a concentration camp. But for reasons never explained, he was released, apparently for lack of evidence – a nicety not often observed by the Gestapo – and was sent on active service to the Russian front. He attributed his remarkable survival to the fact that other detainees did not betray him.

After the war he went into publishing. In 1962 he founded an annual forum on security and defence in the western world. Its remit broadened after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the fall of the Berlin wall, and it is now known as the Munich Security Conference.

His wife, Gundula, survives him.

• Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist-Schmenzin, army officer and publisher, born 10 July 1922; died 8 March 2013

My friend and colleague John Railton, who has died aged 83, was an extraordinary musician, composer, conductor and teacher. He wanted musicians to perform beyond their comfort zones, believed profoundly in everyone's ability and engaged with individuals, groups and communities throughout Britain and overseas, particularly enjoying working with young musicians.

He was born in Streatham, south London, and educated at Battersea grammar school and Cranleigh school, Surrey. He studied organ and piano at the Royal Academy of Music. In 1947 he joined the London Bach Society and for many years assisted Paul Steinitz, its founder, as rehearsal pianist and assistant conductor. He took a teaching post at Ealing grammar school, where his choirs became much in demand by the BBC Symphony Chorus and Orchestra; they performed music outside the normal scope of secondary schools with conductors such as Charles Mackerras, Antal Doráti, Colin Davis, Constantin Silvestri and Pierre Boulez.

In his mid-30s he lost his left arm to cancer, but this did not affect his work at Ealing, where he steadfastly refused to see himself as disabled.

For 21 years he conducted the Ernest Read Music Association's Christmas concerts at the Royal Albert Hall and the Royal Festival Hall. As a music adviser in Hertfordshire he established the Hertfordshire County Youth Choir and Orpheus Youth Choir and in Hitchin he formed the North Herts Guild of Singers and the Orpheus Choir. With fellow pianist, Kate Elmitt, he formed a professional three-handed piano partnership, giving recitals in London, Australia and Singapore.

In his last years in the West Country he taught at Dartington College of Arts, directed the Dartington Community Choir, taught adult music appreciation groups and worked with the East Cornwall Bach festival, the Exeter University Singers and the Exeter Chamber Choir.

He founded and directed the Devon Guild of Singers and Players and was organist and choirmaster at St Andrew's Church, Ashburton. Of the many pieces he transcribed for one hand, the Bach violin Chaconne was his favourite.

In 1959 he founded the Ealing Youth Orchestra, which has produced many professional musicians. To mark his 80th birthday, and the 50th anniversary of the orchestra, he conducted two performances of the Verdi Requiem, giving these young musicians their first opportunity to accompany a major sacred choral work.

He became a fellow of the Royal Academy of Music in 1968 and was appointed MBE in 2012.

He married and divorced twice and had three sons with his first wife, Kathleen, and two sons and a daughter with his second wife, Elizabeth. They all survive him.

My husband, Martin Rogers, who has died of cancer aged 61, was a printer, carpenter, sculptor and publisher. A highly inventive man of vision, he was happiest when engaged in new projects, playing with his favourite tool – the imaginary. Imbued with a subtle ironic humour, he was modest, selfless and caring.

Martin was born in Croydon, south London, and grew up in Caterham, where he won a scholarship to attend Caterham school. A background in printmaking and graphic design, which he studied at the Bath Academy of Art at Corsham Court, Wiltshire, and Brighton College of Art in the 1970s, proved invaluable to his publishing projects. He was generous with his time, notably through running the Research Group for Artist Publications, facilitating publications for visual artists, by working with them to explore the possibilities of combining their visual work with print in book form; he also worked with sound artists using similar principles (producing books accompanied by CDs).

In 2001 he set up the Small Publishers Fair in London, initially at the Royal Festival Hall and for the last 10 years at the Conway Hall. It soon became an international event for artists, writers and poets. The fairs were complemented by exhibitions: one held last autumn celebrated Hans Waanders, a Dutch artist whose work centred on images of the kingfisher, Martin's favourite bird.

Martin was also keen to promote the work of artists who produced books, as with an exhibition of the work of Sol LeWitt at Site Gallery, Sheffield, in 2010. This was followed in 2012 by a collaboration to bring Eugen Gomringer, a leading figure in the field of concrete poetry, exploring the possibilities of typographical arrangement of words, to Britain for a week of events.

In 1976, Martin met Simon Cutts, the director of Coracle Gallery in Camberwell, south London, who launched many successful sculptors. He warmed to the ideas that Martin was working with both as a printmaker and sculptor and invited him to show in the first of many exhibitions at Coracle. His sculpture at that time was often playful, as in his Instruments for Outdoor Use, where he made imaginary instruments, combining natural materials such as slate, or bells, which he cast, with beautifully crafted wooden supports. Martin also began showing through the Victoria Miro Gallery in 1986 for four years, in London, at the Frankfurt Art Fair and at its outlet in Florence.

Martin and I got married last August, after 15 years together. He is survived by his son Tomas, siblings Judy, Elizabeth, Christopher and Ian, and father Rowland.

Expert on the law of the sea who became a world authority on the international regulation of whaling

Patricia Birnie's expertise in law of the sea and international environmental law brought her to prominence at a time when the latter field especially was still in its infancy. In 1983 she joined the law department at the London School of Economics, then as now one of the world's leading repositories of scholarship and teaching in international law. There she taught law of the sea to graduate students and developed a new LLM course on international environmental law. This groundbreaking course was soon drawing outstanding students from all over the world, many now prominent in governments and international organisations.

By the time she left the LSE in 1989, she was one of the world's foremost international environmental lawyers. Her advice was sought by prominent NGOs such as the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and by various governments. Above all, it was her contribution to the writing of International Law and the Environment (1992) that will give Pat, who has died aged 86, an enduring reputation among students and practitioners.

She was born into a well-to-do family in Lytham St Annes, Lancashire, but her father was ruined in the great crash of 1929, and Pat was brought up by an aunt and uncle. They made sure she was well educated at Queen Mary school, Lytham St Annes, and then at St Hilda's College, Oxford, where she studied jurisprudence and took a cricket blue. Pat was called to the bar in 1952, at a time when women barristers were still rarities, and fewer still went into practice.

She was a born academic, though it took some time for her to realise this. Her first job was in the civil service, managing naval estimates at the Treasury, where she met her Scottish husband, Sandy, whom she married in 1951. In 1963 he took her and their three young children back to Scotland, where Pat established a new career teaching international law, initially part-time at Aberdeen and Edinburgh University, before taking a full-time lecturer post at Edinburgh in 1973.

There she wrote and published a PhD on the international law of whaling, becoming the world authority on this controversial subject, and attending meetings of the International Whaling Commission as a legal expert on behalf of various NGOs or as part of the British delegation. Her thesis was published in 1985 as The International Regulation of Whaling and is still relevant today in the battle about the legality of Japanese scientific whaling – a question that will be argued in the international court of justice this summer. Pat's thesis provides much of the essential background research on the origins and negotiation of the 1946 Whaling Convention and her analysis of why that convention does not work remains uncontradicted.

When she moved to the LSE, she had already established the reputation that would sustain her to the end of her career. Extremely knowledgeable about a large array of subjects, she had a superb grasp of the law, but could also explain its importance in the real world.

It was in London, at a lecture she gave on international environmental law, that I first met Pat. Her talk was characteristic – slightly breathless, difficult to cram into the allotted hour, and full of new developments in a subject that still struggled for acceptance among the more conservative professors. But Pat was never deterred by conservatism. She simply sailed calmly round the obstacles, her Treasury training coming in most useful.

No doubt this was one of the reasons why she was headhunted from the LSE by the International Maritime Organisation to become founding director of the International Maritime Law Institute in Malta, building it within a few years into a successful training academy for young maritime lawyers from many jurisdictions. She retired from there in 1994 and spent several weeks driving slowly from the capital, Valletta, back to Oxfordshire and a cottage in Brill.

She gave freely of her expertise in support of various organisations dealing with law of the sea and protection of the marine environment, including the Advisory Committee on Pollution of the Sea (ACOPS), and the Greenwich Forum, an independent body that promotes public awareness of Britain's dependence on the sea, of which she was chair for many years. But she was not starry-eyed about her role. Here was a shrewd and hard-headed lawyer, who knew well that to do good requires professionalism as much as it requires idealism, that saying something should be law does not make it so.

And it was always obvious to those around her that if she was going to save the world, she would most definitely enjoy herself while doing so. No opportunity for a new outdoor experience was ever turned down, and even in her 70s she took her first flights in a balloon and a glider. Everyone who knew her had a Pat Birnie story, if not a fund of them.

My own favourite is the one about an escaped whale hovering in Turkish territorial waters. The Russians wanted it back in their aquarium. But would it be lawful for the Turks to catch it? Would they be violating the Whaling Convention? No, Pat advised, catching a whale alive for an aquarium was not whaling and did not contravene the convention. But first, catch your whale.

She is survived by her son, Charles, her daughters, Louise and Jessica, and six grandchildren. Sandy died in 1982.

• Patricia Winifred Birnie, legal scholar, born 17 November 1926; died 7 February 2013

Pol Pot's brother-in-law and senior figure in the Khmer Rouge charged with war crimes and genocide

Ieng Sary, who has died aged 87, was for many years "Brother No 3" in the hierarchy of the communist Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and was the brother-in-law of Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge's enigmatic leader. When the Khmer Rouge held power in Cambodia, between 1975 and 1979, during which time it is estimated that a quarter of the population were murdered, or died from disease or starvation, Ieng Sary served the regime as its deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs.

He relinquished both portfolios after the Khmer Rouge were driven from power and into exile in Thailand, but remained a spokesman for the movement until the early 1990s. In 1996 he defected to the government in Phnom Penh, and was granted an amnesty by King Norodom Sihanouk.

Ieng Sary lived comfortably for years in Pailin, in north-western Cambodia, and in a capacious villa in Phnom Penh, but a case was being built against him and in 2007 he was arrested. He was put on trial in 2011 by the Extraordinary Chambers in the courts of Cambodia, a joint Cambodian-international tribunal, on charges including crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide. Proceedings were continuing at the time of his death, as were those against two other former Khmer Rouge leaders, Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan.

Ieng Sary was born into a Sino-Khmer family in the southern Vietnamese province of Trà Vinh, still home to a sizable Cambodian minority. Born as Kim Trang, he changed his name after moving to Cambodia, then a protectorate of France, in 1942. As a student at Cambodia's only high school, he joined the pro-independence Democratic party and helped to organise an anti-colonial strike at the school in 1949.

There were no tertiary institutions in Cambodia at the time, and in 1950 Democrats in the Cambodian education ministry awarded Ieng Sary a scholarship to study political science in France. Like several other Cambodians at the time, including Saloth Sar – later known as Pol Pot – Ieng Sary enjoyed living in Paris and neglected his studies. In 1951,he joined the French Communist party. By the sheer force of his personality, he dominated the Marxist study group that he co-founded in Paris with an older Cambodian, Keng Vannsak.

In the same year he married a radical fellow student, Khieu Thirith, but in 1953, Ieng Sary's scholarship was withdrawn because of his political activities. The couple lingered in Paris for three and half more years. In the meantime, Cambodia had gained its independence from France and Sihanouk had embarked on 17 years of idiosyncratic one-man rule. By staying in France, Ieng Sary, who assumed that he would play an important role in Cambodia's small, clandestine Communist movement, was bypassed by Saloth Sar, who had returned home in 1953 and briefly joined the Vietnamese-led resistance to the French.

In 1956, Saloth Sar married Thirith's older sister, Khieu Ponnary, who shared his radical ideas. When Ieng Sary and Thirith returned to Cambodia in 1957 they lived for a time with Saloth Sar and his wife. The four became teachers in Phnom Penh and performed organisational tasks for the embryonic and harassed communist movement, renamed the Workers' Party of Kampuchea in 1960, when Ieng Sary became a member of its five-man central committee.

Saloth Sar took charge of the committee three years later, after his predecessor, Tou Samouth, had been killed by Sihanouk's police. In the same year, fearing arrest, Ieng Sary, Saloth Sar and several colleagues fled to a Vietnamese communist military base that moved back and forth across the Cambodia-Vietnam border, staying there for two years. When the Vietnam war intensified, they moved to the remote, lightly populated north-eastern province of Mondulkiri, and changed the name of their party to the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK). Over the next five years, the isolated directorate of the CPK recruited followers and plotted to seize power. Little is known of Ieng Sary's role in these discussions. The CPK inaugurated armed struggle against Sihanouk in early 1968, but resistance was ineffective until 1970, when Sihanouk was deposed in a pro-American coup. The Khmer Rouge swiftly allied themselves with Vietnamese communist forces, who provided them with arms, equipment and training.

Resistance to the new regime in Phnom Penh was ostensibly headed by Sihanouk, who had established himself in opulent exile in Beijing. Ieng Sary travelled there in 1971 as "the representative of the interior", ie of Pol Pot and other leaders of the CPK who were fighting in Cambodia. His job was to monitor Sihanouk's mercurial behaviour. The two men despised each other, but swallowed their pride sufficiently to travel together to the so-called liberated zones of Cambodia in 1973. By that stage, the Vietnamese had withdrawn their troops, and the fighting in Cambodia, augmented by extensive US bombing, had become a civil war.

Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge forces in April 1975, when Ieng Sary was in Beijing. He had played no part in the military campaigns that had led up to victory. As the new government of Democratic Kampuchea took shape in 1976, he was named deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs, while holding on to his position in the party's central committee. There is some evidence that he was not trusted by the CPK's second-in-command, Nuon Chea, who disapproved of his "bourgeois" point of view.

Over the next three years, Ieng Sary was a spokesman for the regime, travelling abroad to conferences and boasting that the Cambodian revolution was superior to any that had ever taken place elsewhere. Because of his reputation as a truth-telling intellectual, he drew hundreds of young Cambodians back from overseas. Soon after they arrived, many of these deluded patriots were put to death. In Phnom Penh, where Ieng Sary lived comfortably, he made sure that his wife and family occupied relatively undemanding positions in the regime.

As Democratic Kampuchea hardened its stance towards Vietnam in 1977, and went to war with its former ally in 1978, Ieng Sary worked to expand the narrow range of countries with which Democratic Kampuchea enjoyed diplomatic relations. Several openings occurred, but they came too late to prevent the Vietnamese invasion of December 1978 that removed Democratic Kampuchea from power the following month.

In 1979, at a show trial in Phnom Penh, Ieng Sary and Pol Pot were labelled "fascists" and condemned to death in absentia for genocidal crimes. In the 1980s, as the Khmer Rouge reformed in Thailand, Ieng Sary took responsibility for military and economic relations with China. By the early 1990s, when he proposed that the Khmer Rouge should contest national elections, as stipulated by the United Nations, the leadership sidelined him. In 1996, he defected to Phnom Penh.

As he emerged from the shadows, it was clear that his arrogance and interest in good living had not deserted him. Feeling secure with the amnesty he had received, he blamed the horrors of Democratic Kampuchea on other people: at a press conference soon afterwards he stated that Pol Pot "was the sole and supreme architect of the party's line, strategy and tactics". In 1997, Khmer Rouge in-fighting, followed by Pol Pot's death under house arrest in 1998, and the capture or surrender of remaining leaders, meant that the movement ceased to exist.

Ieng Thirith was arrested alongside her husband in 2007, but was judged mentally unfit to stand trial. She survives him. Their son Ieng Vuth is the deputy governor of Pailin.

• Ieng Sary (Kim Trang), political leader, born 24 October 1925; died 14 March 2013

Architect at the forefront of ecological building design

The architect Howard Liddell, who has died aged 67 of cancer, was a pioneering figure in ecological design and community planning. When he went to Aberfeldy in the Tay valley in 1978, the idea of ecological design – let alone what would much later become universally accepted as sustainable development – was hardly spoken of. However, Howard was already looking for ways to integrate the triad of place, work and folk. In doing so, he took forward the legacy of the Scottish biologist and planner Sir Patrick Geddes (1854-1932), and always sought to achieve ecological goals through simple solutions with minimal technology.

An early statement of these principles came in an Aberfeldy manifesto, and Howard co-founded an action body for local regeneration, the Breadalbane Institute. His architectural work included designing the Aberfeldy recreation centre, and he became chairman of Aberfeldy community council, co-founder of a local newspaper – and even broke his leg in the first Aberfeldy raft race.

In working with communities, Howard displayed patient commitment and encouraged user participation. Over a period of 18 years from 1986, he was a key figure and architect behind the revival of the deprived Fairfield housing area in Perth, working with its inhabitants and the authorities. The final phase of affordable, ecological housing, "low-allergy" in the sense of being built to minimise environmentally caused allergies and asthma, was crowned by a UN World Habitat award in 2003. Howard ran many community-participation processes: a fruitful interactive workshop series with schoolchildren, the Children's Ecocity events in Scotland and Belfast from 1992 onwards, led to the creation in 1996 of the Children's Parliament in Edinburgh.

Born in Yorkshire, Howard spent his early years in Newcastle upon Tyne, where he conceived a lifelong passion for Newcastle United Football Club. His family moved to Edinburgh in the late 1950s. Following a sporting and active outdoor youth, and a prospective career in linguistics, at the age of 18 Howard talked himself into the Edinburgh School of Architecture. Though he lacked any of the appropriate qualifications, he went on to graduate with a first.

After practising as an architect, in 1971 he went to Hull School of Architecture as a senior lecturer and then director of research. His time at the University of Oslo as guest professor of building ecology from 1979 led to the formation of the Gaia Group Norway, and subsequently of the small but influential Gaia International network. For more than 25 years Howard also taught on the postgraduate course I ran each summer at the University of Oslo, with participants from many countries.

In 1996 he moved to Edinburgh with his second wife, Sandy Halliday, to form the interdisciplinary Gaia Group, combining architecture, engineering, planning and research. It produced cutting-edge environmental solutions with a focus on local context, nature preservation and simplicity.

Howard's projects with Gaia Architects included some of Scotland's earliest ecological buildings, often born out of seeing how a community's aspirations could be realised through sports, leisure and tourism facilities. The Glencoe Visitor Centre, constructed from untreated timber, won a Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors sustainability award in 2003.

Tressour Wood, an all-timber house in Weem, near Aberfeldy, is heated by solar gain and a woodfire stove: in 1993 it won a UK house of the year award. Plummerswood, a private residence overlooking the river Tweed, and Acharacle primary school, Argyll, use Brettstapel (stacked plank) prefabricated timber and have achieved the passive energy standard – consuming minimal energy for heating, with natural rather than mechanical ventilation.

Howard was a forceful organiser and the prime mover behind the establishment and running of SEDA, the Scottish Ecological Design Association, in 1991. His recent book, Eco-minimalism – The Antidote to Eco-bling (2008), goes against today's narrow focus on purely technical solutions, arguing for a holistic perspective and common sense: a second edition has just been published.

Few architects have been such keen advocates of cross-disciplinary thinking, and Howard's energising optimism made him an exemplary educator. In January he was appointed OBE.

His first marriage, to Jenny, ended in divorce in 1981. He is survived by Sandy, whom he married in 1995; by his children, Becky, Emma, Briony and Jamie, from his first marriage; and by eight grandchildren.

• Howard Laurence Liddell, architect and ecological activist, born 7 June 1945; died 23 February 2013

Actor best known as the haughty department store supervisor Captain Peacock in the TV comedy Are You Being Served?

The actor Frank Thornton, who has died aged 92, had a flair for comedy derived from the subtle craftsmanship of classical stage work. However, he will be best remembered for his longstanding characters in two popular BBC television comedy series – the sniffily priggish Captain Peacock in Are You Being Served? and the pompous retired policeman Herbert "Truly" Truelove, in Roy Clarke's Last of the Summer Wine.

Robertson Hare, the great Whitehall farceur, told him: "You'll never do any good until you're 40." And, said Thornton, "he was quite right." In the event, he was 51 when David Croft, producer of another long-running British staple, Dad's Army, remembered the tall, long-faced actor from another engagement and decided to cast him as the dapper floor-walker in charge of shop assistants played by Mollie Sugden, Wendy Richard, Trevor Bannister and John Inman in the Grace Brothers department store of Are You Being Served? (1973‑85). Thornton's latter-day Malvolio, all pinstripes and impassive disdain, proved a perfect antithesis to the general air of jobsworthy incompetence and smutty innuendo.

Captain Peacock was ideal casting for Thornton, who went on to appear in all 10 series. For when it came to a sense of the punctilious, the right way to do things, Thornton was your man.

In later life, he came to lament his own typecasting, feeling it had limited his chance to play more heavyweight roles. But his deadpan manner and ability to play the straight man gave him a career that extended for more than seven decades from a debut in 1940.

It was Thornton's understated but exquisite sense of timing that marked him out and gave him his durability, something that the writer-director Ray Cooney put down to his early years in weekly repertory, where over a period of three years "you'd get through 150 plays. It steeped you in character work."

He recalled Thornton's ability to hold his ground in the most trying circumstances, citing an instance in the 1993 run of his West End farce It Runs in the Family. With the rest of the cast "corpsing" around him, Thornton, solid as a rock, and the foil for the surrounding mayhem, resisted by a desperate working of his eyebrows before finally succumbing "with tears pouring down his face". He was, says Cooney, the epitome of professionalism.

Born Frank Thornton Ball in Dulwich, south-east London, he was educated at Alleyn's school. He knew he wanted to be an actor from about the age of five, but first became an insurance clerk, taking drama classes at night at the London School of Dramatic Art. As a child, he described himself as "a bit of a loner, not one of the lads. I think I was probably a bit of a prig because I seem to have been stuck with this supercilious persona for as long as I can remember."

From his first professional appearance, in Terence Rattigan's French Without Tears in Co Tipperary, he swiftly graduated to companies led by the actor-managers Donald Wolfit – where he met his future wife, Beryl Evans – and John Gielgud. After reaching the West End and appearing in the first production of Rattigan's Flare Path in 1942, Thornton then spent four years in the real RAF.

After demob, he divided his time between repertory and the West End before his television comedy career took off in 1960 with Michael Bentine's frenetic It's a Square World. Regular appearances followed alongside such comic greats as Tony Hancock (including the celebrated Hancock's Half Hour episode, The Blood Donor), Benny Hill, Eric Sykes, Ronnie Corbett and even Kenny Everett, on whose show he memorably appeared attired as a punk rocker.

But he also continued to work in the theatre. His air of lugubriousness served him well as a "grey-faced, bug-eyed" Eeyore (as one review put it), in an adaptation of Winnie the Pooh at the Phoenix theatre, London, in the early 1970s.

In 1980, he and Gwen Nelson were the old couple in Eugène Ionesco's absurdist drama The Chairs for the Royal Exchange, Manchester, and played Gremio in Jonathan Miller's TV version of The Taming of the Shrew. Throughout the 1980s and 90s, he could be seen in the West End and elsewhere in classic revivals: Cooney farces, and musicals such as Me and My Girl (1984), Spread a Little Happiness (1992) and three of the Barbican's Lost Musicals series, Music in the Air (1993), the Gershwins' Strike Up the Band (1994) and Take Me Along (1995).

The reality TV court show got its comeuppance with the spoof version All Rise for Julian Clary (1996-97) in which Thornton supplied the necessary token gravitas. When his turn came for This Is Your Life in 1998, Clary responded with a glowing compliment: "I'm here, Frank, to tell the world what we all know, what a funny, amusing and very handsome man you are." By then Thornton had succeeded Michael Bates, Brian Wilde and Michael Aldridge in leading the exploits of the trio at the heart of Last of the Summer Wine: his tenure lasted from 1997 till the series came to a close in 2010.

Thornton had more than 60 film credits, including Victim (1961), The Dock Brief (1962), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (with Zero Mostel, 1966), A Flea in Her Ear (with Rex Harrison, 1968), The Bed Sitting Room (1969), The Old Curiosity Shop (1995) and Gosford Park (2001), as well as the Disney TV adaptation of Great Expectations (1991). His last appearance came in the 2012 film version of Run for Your Wife.

He is survived by Beryl, whom he married in 1945; a daughter, Jane; and three grandsons.

• Frank Thornton (Ball), actor, born 15 January 1921; died 16 March 2013

I first met David Farrell in 1993, when I was researching the history of movie stills photography. Farrell's career as an outstanding film stills man has not been as widely recognised as his other, earlier photographic work. However, his naturally easy-going manner was ideally suited to the task, and he excelled in this field, producing not only the required portraits and scene stills, but also many revealing and spontaneous behind-the-scenes shots of director, stars and film crews at work.

He is probably best known for his photos of Peter Sellers on two of the Pink Panther movies, though they are often uncredited. He first met Sellers when the actor visited the set of the 1976 film Mohammad, Messenger of God, on location in north Africa. A camera enthusiast himself, Sellers had brought with him his latest acquisition, a new slimline Polaroid camera. Farrell spent some time with the star, sharing his ideas on photography and struck up a friendship that led soon after to an involvement with Inspector Clouseau.

Writer who recounted her experience of cancer with engaging candour and published a book based on her popular blog

The writer Lisa Lynch, who has died aged 33 of cancer, did a great deal to transform the way younger women think about the disease, both in the blogosphere and in print. She launched her blog Alright Tit shortly after being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2008: it was a witty and inspiring personal diary about "the extraordinary life of an ordinary girl woman" – not, she insisted, "Just Another Moany Health Blog".

Stephen Fry described her work as "funny and brilliant". The blog had 140,000 hits within its first year and in 2010 spawned a book, The C-Word, hailed by the Observer as "amazing".

Dubbing cancer The Bullshit™, she displayed a no-nonsense, witty, candid style that was perfect for blogging. Her book was the first of its kind: a mash-up of Sex and the City, her passion for Louboutin shoes (a reward for surviving chemotherapy) and her determination to remain herself throughout her illness. Another blogger noted how she "helped so many younger women through their own experiences and has raised awareness that younger women do get breast cancer – more than any awareness campaign ever could".

Her readers loved her because she made them laugh, and because cancer was just a part of her life – but never the main part. The subtitle of her book summed up her priorities: "Just your average 28-year-old. Friends, family, Facebook, cancer." There is due to be an adaptation for BBC1.

Lynch voiced the highs in an inspiring way, giving herself treats to look forward to such as her brother's wedding and time with friends at Glastonbury, calling the festival "Middle-Class-Tonbury" because she was booked to stay in a camper van: "It was time to take my finger off the pause button and press play on my lovely life once more."

Born and brought up in Derby, Lisa McFarlane, known to her friends as "Mac", studied English at Loughborough University, where she reported on music for the student newspaper. She then took an MA in journalism at Goldsmiths in London, paying for her course by freelancing for the Daily Telegraph and working night shifts at the Guardian. In December 2006, she married Peter Lynch and they set up home in south-west London.

After starting out in interiors magazines as a subeditor, she beat her goal of becoming an editor before the age of 30: at 25, she was editor of Real Homes and, later, Inspired Living. After she received the cancer diagnosis, she began the blog and went freelance. She was working on two new books until shortly before her death.

A huge sports fan, she supported Derby County football club. She loved music and, after cancer treatment, had a lyric from the Beatles' Blackbird tattooed on her arm: "Take these broken wings and learn to fly." Though she survived breast cancer, a secondary cancer was diagnosed in 2011.

As a writer she had an ambiguous relationship with her illness. "I don't like to give cancer credit for anything – but I'm proud of my book and it's good that something positive can come out of my experience. I always intended, one day, to write a book. The way I look at it, cancer is like the Heathrow Express – it did get me there faster, but it cost a lot more." Fry summed up her wit and strength: "I don't think she'd mind me calling her the web's No 1 cancer bitch." She kept the title, adding: "But not, I hasten to add, cancer's bitch."

She is survived by Peter; her parents, Jane and Ian; and brother, Jamie.

• Lisa Lynch, writer and blogger, born 30 August 1979; died 11 March 2013

Quick-thinking comedian whose 'northern comic' routine was a model for many standups

Norman Collier, who has died aged 87, was much loved by fellow comedians, and his apparently old-fashioned "northern comic" routine has proved a lasting model for younger and very different successors, including Ricky Gervais and Danny Baker. In his most famous act, which required exceptionally quick thinking and imagination, he delivered a long and often surreal monologue through an apparently faulty microphone; another favourite was his extraordinary imitation of a chicken. During his heyday he was on the bill, from Blackpool to London, with the biggest variety performers of the day, among them Cliff Richard, Tom Jones and the Everly Brothers.

After a breakthrough at the 1971 Royal Variety Performance, at which he effectively stole the show, he graduated to television and developed an international following. He was a natural on the small screen, which suited him perfectly. Programmes such as ITV's Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club (1974-77) both borrowed and gently sent up the northern club atmosphere, and Collier's material was ideal, as he avoided the crudities and racism that marred the work of some of his contemporaries.

That said, his first preference was always for a live audience, including the to-ing and fro-ing with the audience on panto. He appeared across the country – with a well-timed break on Christmas Day, which was his birthday – but looked back particularly fondly on his role as Widow Twankey opposite Little and Large at the New theatre in Hull.

A lucky and happy man with roots in his native Hull, which he refused to sever even at the height of his fame in the 1960s and 70s, Collier was brought up in poverty, the eldest child of eight in a two-bedroom terraced house with no hot water. Had circumstances been different, his quicksilver mind would have taken him to university but instead he entered the navy, serving as a gunner on an aircraft carrier at the end of the second world war, and then becoming a labourer on building sites.

In both worlds, his wit and good nature made him many friends, even, unexpectedly, among management. Larking about while shifting scrap at a chemical works on the outskirts of Hull, he was using an old metal funnel as a pretend politician's loudhailer, when a foreman chanced on the scene. Expecting to be sacked, Collier was instead encouraged to keep his colleagues in good humour during the long, hard and often chilly job.

A similar chance, after work one evening in 1948, proved his entree to comedy. Collier had gone with a mate to Hull's Perth Street club – one of many small, privately run venues in the port – on an evening when one of the scheduled comedians failed to show. As was standard, a volunteer replacement was sought from the audience; Collier put his hand up, took to the stage, and went down a storm.

The experience encouraged him to risk five shillings on a Variety Artists Association card, which allowed him to join the bill at similar clubs, initially in Hull and then further inland at Goole, Doncaster and Barnsley. Audiences were famously tough in these places but warmly appreciative of performers whom they reckoned to have given good value. Collier's name spread. By 1962 he had so many bookings in northern England that he turned professional, signing up with Lew Grade's talent agency.

At the same time, he was starting a family with his wife, Lucy, who kept his feet on the ground and his head unswollen, according to their three children and the grandchildren and great-grandchildren who were in due course to celebrate the couple's diamond wedding four years ago. Further afield, he toured in the US and east Asia, but he resolutely refused to move from Hull and returned there after each contract, even if Lucy's sandwiches, wrapped in foil inside a dockworkers' "snap tin" or lunchbox, could not accompany him overseas.

He continued working well into the new century, earning the admiration of a succession of younger performers from Jimmy Tarbuck, who called him "the comedian's comedian", to Gervais, who made reference to Collier's most famous act in a tweet reading "R P orman ollier". Grand old men of the profession were equally generous; Eric Sykes had considered that he and Collier were the last in the vaudeville tradition.

Collier raised a lot of money for charity; he was a mainstay of the Grand Order of Water Rats and specialised in fundraising golf tournaments, playing for many years for the Variety Club of Great Britain.

He had suffered from Parkinson's disease for several years, but took the condition with his customary good nature and was central to his ever-expanding family. His autobiography, published in 2009, was completed in the face of his lifelong enjoyment of rambling diversions and tangents. Its title, Just a Job, was misleading, as his work always involved deep commitment.

He is survived by Lucy, their son and two daughters, and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

• Norman Collier, comedian, born 25 December 1925; died 14 March 2013