My husband, David Lyon, who has died aged 87, spent his working life in further education as one of the youngest and then one of the longest-serving college principals in Britain. His first job, in Kenya in 1960, involved inspecting and teaching in remote schools. While he lived there he started to research the development of African government in Kenya between 1900 and 1962, which led to a PhD from Nottingham University in 1966.
Returning to the UK in 1962 he became a teacher at colleges in Derby, Harlow and Nottingham before becoming principal of Grantham College in Lincolnshire in 1971, aged 36. After his first marriage, to Pamela (nee Reed), ended in divorce, he moved to Chesterfield College of Technology in Derbyshire as principal in 1979 and was reappointed when it merged with Chesterfield College of Art in 1984, becoming one of the larger colleges in the Midlands. We met there when I was a head of department, and we were married in December 1985.
David was born in Hong Kong, to David Lyon, an electrical engineer, and Rene (nee Griffiths), a housewife and later a secretary, before moving in 1940 to India, where his brother, Peter, was born. The family moved back to England when David was 11 years old.
He attended Wallasey grammar school in Merseyside and Sir George Monoux grammar school in Walthamstow, London, and then graduated in economics in 1958 from Nottingham University. He was a boxing blue at university, and became a British universities boxing champion in 1958.
David returned to university after his retirement in 2000, obtaining a first-class honours degree in Spanish and Hispanic studies, aged 72, from Sheffield. This was followed by a master’s in history, also from Sheffield. His research for it in Andalucía and the Basque Country led to his book Bitter Justice being published by the University of Nevada when he was 82.
David had been a Samaritan and a local magistrate as a young man in Grantham. In later life, he served on the Derbyshire family practitioners committee, which decided whether young women could be released from care, became a trustee of Ashgate Hospice care and was an elected governor of Chesterfield Royal hospital. He also taught Spanish and the Spanish civil war to part-time groups for the Workers’ Educational Association and the U3A (University of the Third Age).
David is survived by me, his children, Heather and Jane, from his marriage to Pamela, and grandchildren, David, Miranda, Eduard, Isabella, Pablo and Luisa.
