Dad was born in North London and was proud of his cockney roots and Irish ancestry. He was also shaped by having left school at 14 - he felt straight away that this was far too early and determined to make up for it- first by going to the local library and reading the classics in a row along the shelves and then by attending courses in the army and finally studying for two degrees and becoming a teacher.
He was called up at the end of the war and despite being, at his admission a potentially awful wartime soldier ( he once nearly killed an officer in a grenade throwing exercise) he thrived in the years after the war enjoying the travel and chance to mix with all nationalities of people- two long term interests.
As a teacher he carried on with the travel and attended international conferences at one off which he met his future wife Hildegard. They chose to marry in Malawi in Africa where they both worked for over a year and where I was born. When Mum got pregnant again, they chose to move to the UK and settle in Tunbridge Wells where first Tom and then Kate were born. While here he got a job at Sandown Court school and taught hundreds of young people as head of English including the young Sid Vicious!
More than anything, Dad was a family man- he waited quite a time before starting a family of his own, being 39 when he married mum, but before then he was a great uncle to his four nephews taking each of them on holidays away boating or abroad and spoiling them with presents. Once he started to have children of his own, he was a very sentimental dad- in a time when shows of affection were more rare than today, we can well remember dad endlessly telling us  how much he loved us or praising us in other ways. This tradition carried on with his three grandchildren, Ben, Billy and Caitlin.
He was a passionate politician with a strong sense of social justice and as a Liberal democrat counsellor and county councillor became involved briefly in running the town and in 1998 served as mayor - a role he claimed was just a bit of needless pomp, but secretly loved. 
He was also heavily involved in amateur dramatics with first the Tunbridge Wells Drama club, then the Oast Theatre in Tunbridge and finally Trinity theatre Club. He was always memorable on stage, but never more than the time his trousers fell down while he was performing in Shakespeare on the Pantiles Bandstand.
He had a love of travel and even up to his 90th birthday was going on international holidays as far afield as Australia where his sister lived-  often fiercely independently unaccompanied in later years. On return, he would always be able to terrify his children with tales of some scrape or other.
In recent years the travel got scarier as he developed an odd habit of visiting a country shortly before a war broke out, for example in the Ukraine, Lebanon and Syria. The family used to wonder if we should warn a nation of his impending arrival.

He was a real gentleman- fun to be around and concerned about the welfare of others. He was an enormously keen cosmopolitan and proudly European- His nephew Bill has suggested that he passed when he did because he would not have wanted to be around after brexit!
He seemed as if he could go on for ever and was keen to reach a hundred, but as a staunch republican terrified of getting a telegram from the Queen. We will all miss him enormously.