My mother, Natalie Lerner, who has died aged 90, first met my father, Laurence, on the side of a mountain, in South Africa, where they both grew up. He found it hard to keep up with her that day – and a few times later in their 66-year marriage.
Born in Cape Town, the daughter of Jack Winch and his wife, Renee (nee Frudd), Nat went to school and university locally, and from an early age showed a keen interest in the plants and animals around her. She studied at Cambridge University, where she gained a doctorate in plant reproduction. She married Larry, also a Cambridge graduate, in 1948, and life as an academic’s wife and teacher took her the following year to Ghana, where my elder brother, David, and I were born, and in 1953 to Belfast, where she gave birth to my younger brothers, Martin and Richard.
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