My mother, Claudia Mason, who has died aged 71, led a life full of creativity and love for the written word.
At the age of 21, having moved to London after graduation in 1973, and with very little retail and no management experience, but a huge love of literature and art, she became the manager of the Zwemmers Oxford University Press bookshop on Charing Cross Road.
During this period, Claudia and her soon-to-be husband, David Mason, moved on to a dilapidated old sailing barge on the Thames in Brentford, then on to a more seaworthy yacht a few years later.
This opened a new world of kindred spirits among the houseboat dwellers, and at a time when the rights of mooring holders on the Thames were relatively non-existent, they became members of the Residential Boat Owners Association (RBOA), fighting for the rights of boat dwellers and travelling in flotillas up the river to protest outside parliament.
Claudia and David married in 1975. On becoming pregnant in 1979, Claudia left Zwemmers and became a freelance signwriter, painting huge banners in the cabin of our small boat, including ones for the Tate gallery. This creativity was applied to everything – drawing, wood carving, gardening, and home decoration. Also a talented cook, Claudia was not restricted by a tiny galley kitchen in creating meals that continue to live long in the memory.
Born in Kingston-upon-Thames, Claudia was the daughter of Barbara (nee Alston), who worked as a librarian at the BBC until her marriage, and Cedric Bowers, an industrial photographer. She went to the Convent of the Sacred Heart school in Epsom, Surrey, and then to Durham University to study English, where she met David, a fellow student.
In London, Claudia worked for short spells at a Dillons bookshop and in the books department of Harrods before being appointed manager of the Zwemmers OUP bookshop. In 1976 she moved across to the publishing arm.
We eventually grew out of our boat on the Thames, and in the late 1980s our family moved on to a larger boat and up the east coast to Inverness. There, in 1991, we moved on to land, and eventually Claudia returned to bookselling, working first in James Thin, and then, from 1997 for 10 years until the branch’s closure, in Waterstones.
She was a devoted reader of the Bookseller and took great joy and care in choosing books for the children of family and friends, keeping meticulous records so no family received the same book twice.
Claudia was diagnosed with dementia in 2019, but her essence has been preserved not only in the bookshelves and literary lives of those children, but in hundreds of letters and postcards that she sent throughout her life – my sister and I have realised that it is actually quite unusual for your mother to send you a postcard whenever she goes on a day trip.
David survives her, as do her daughters, Helen and me, and three grandsons, Sam, Ben and Owen.
