My mother, Jane Jones, who has died aged 89, was a primary school teacher with a passion for Shakespeare. She always said there were two men in her life: her husband, John, and William Shakespeare himself. She kept a well-thumbed copy of the Sonnets in her handbag throughout her life, and could recite many of them by heart.
Born in Bromborough, Wirral, to Nora (nee Darlington) and Fred Hosker, a soap factory worker who eventually became a research chemist at Lever Brothers in Port Sunlight, Jane discovered Shakespeare at Wirral grammar school for girls, and as a teenager frequented the matinees at Liverpool Playhouse. She then trained at Worcester Teacher Training College, where she met her future husband, John Jones. They married in 1956 after she had spent 18 months recovering from tuberculosis in a sanatorium, where she was wheeled outside every day regardless of the weather.
At first Jane and John lived with his extended family in Hayes, west London, where their daughters, Sarah and I, were born, before moving back to Worcester; a son, Gareth, soon followed. As we grew up, she took us to see many RSC performances in Stratford-upon-Avon, including Judi Dench in Twelfth Night and Peter Brook’s groundbreaking production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
After some early years of looking after her children, Jane worked full-time as a teacher, first at Henwick Park infants school in Worcester (1969-71) and then, after the family had moved to Hindhead, Surrey, at Shottermill infants school in nearby Haslemere, becoming deputy head in 1983.
After retirement in 1990 she signed up as a friend of the Globe theatre in London, often taking her grandchildren there, and continued to work at Shottermill as a part-time teacher until leaving fully in 1999.
John died in 2007, and Jane was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2009. However, her positive attitude and ability to connect with people helped her to live well with dementia in a warden-assisted flat in Guildford and, for the last 11 years of her life, in a care home in Hove, East Sussex.
In 2015 she became part of the first cohort of people to join the Time for Dementia initiative, developed by the Brighton and Sussex medical school, in which medical students visit dementia patients, along with their carers, to learn about the condition. She loved having contact with students again, and it was wonderful to see her inspiring others right to the end.
She is survived by Sarah, Gareth and me, and six grandchildren.
