My father, Bill Shephard, an amateur musician and doll's-house builder, has died at the age of 84. The first in his family to go to university or to hold a white-collar job, he worked for many years at the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate, where in 1975 he revamped the First Certificate and Proficiency exams for English as a foreign language and English for speakers of other languages.
Bill was born in Petts Wood, Kent, and spent his national service with the RAF in Malaya. Talking Australian pilots through landing procedures, he found a camaraderie which he later rediscovered in the RAF Association. He returned home in 1948 to a job in advertising and began attending evening classes at London University, taught by the communist poet Randall Swingler, who encouraged him to apply for a scholarship to Cambridge. This provided his pathway to a new life.
Always a private person, Bill told no one of his plans, strapping a suitcase to his bicycle one morning and telling his parents: "I'm off to Cambridge. I'll be back in three years." He read English at Clare College and joined the Communist party. There he made lifelong friends and met his future wife, Etel. They married in 1954.
Bill then undertook research on East Anglian dialects with Harold Orton at Leeds University, after which he taught at an early comprehensive school in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, and then taught English as a foreign language in Birmingham. In 1962 he returned to Cambridge to work at the examinations syndicate in charge of overseas O and A-level English. Later he revised the First Certificate exam, followed by Proficiency.
This highly intelligent, quiet man was a wonderful father to his four daughters – Judy, Tess, Clare and me. He read to us and played Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger songs on the piano. He made puppets and doll's houses for us and his grandchildren, as well as for sale at Daily Worker and Morning Star bazaars. He hated gardening, but cheered up winter flowerbeds with bright plastic flowers.
After taking early retirement in 1989, Bill joined the Cambridge Guitar Orchestra, the University of the Third Age and the Cambridge Men's Group. He was also a keen cyclist until he fractured his hip at the age of 82, after which his health never recovered. He was intellectually agile, cynical and politically engaged to the last.
He is survived by Etel, his daughters, 11 grandchildren and a great-grandson.