Joan Mitchell obituary

My mother, Joan Mitchell, who has died aged 93, was from 1952 a lecturer and from 1978 professor of political economy at Nottingham University. She wrote several books on economic planning and served on a number of national economic bodies in the 1970s.

Daughter of Albert, who worked for a paper merchant, and Eva, a former shop assistant, Joan was born in Hackney, east London. She was educated at Southend high school for girls, Essex, and St Hilda's College, Oxford, where she took a first in philosophy, politics and economics in 1942. She became a temporary civil servant in the Ministry of Fuel and Power, where her boss was another PPE graduate and temporary civil servant beginning to make a name for himself Harold Wilson.