My mother, Estelle Serpell, who has died aged 96, led a long and remarkable life, informed by enduring commitments to education, charity and social responsibility.
Born Estelle Loggin in Duncan, on Vancouver Island, Canada, she moved at the age of 10 with her parents to the UK. After attending Micklefield school in Seaford, East Sussex, she completed her English degree at Bedford College, University of London, just before the outbreak of the second world war.
In 1940 she married Michael Friend Serpell, an assistant curator at the National Portrait Gallery, who went on to serve in British government security. My sister, Hilary, and I were born during the wartime evacuation of London. After the war, our family lived in the suburb of Barnes, commuting into London for work and school.
A devoted home-maker and educator of her children, Estelle maintained a part-time professional career, offering evening lectures at the City Lit adult education college in Holborn on Know Your Classics, covering an international range of literature, and a diploma course in English literature.
Michael's job meant travelling around the world, including stints in Singapore and Thailand, during which Estelle taught at the universities of Nanyang (1959-62) and Thammasat, Bangkok (1964-66) respectively. In 1966, they settled in the Norfolk village of Kenninghall, and Estelle continued to teach until the 1980s.
Her approach to teaching aimed to cultivate aesthetic sensitivity and delight in the pursuit of knowledge. Education, she said, should be understood above all as "a feast for the mind". She attributed her own love of literature to two of her teachers at Bedford College, FP Wilson and Louis MacNeice, and sought to inspire it in her students.
Estelle's sense of social responsibility led her to undertake extensive voluntary work, as well as make donations to Oxfam. The same spirit informed her courageous advocacy on behalf of those facing bureaucratic oppression, and her decision to install solar-powered heating in her house.
Her liberal political consciousness, initially somewhat restrained, eventually found expression in fundraising for the Social Democratic party. Estelle's life in many ways represented the maxim: "Think globally, act locally." Above all, she was a loyal believer in personal relationships and was much loved and respected by family, friends, neighbours and students.
Following Michael's death in 1983, Estelle remained a pillar of the community in Kenninghall for another 25 years. In 2009, her declining health led her to move to a nursing home in Hilary's Cornwall village of Coverack.
She is survived by Hilary and me; seven grandchildren, Simon, Lucy, Harriet, Derek, Zewe, Namwali and Suwi; and 12 great-grandchildren.