the times | Saturday September 5 2020 1GM 81
Readers’ Lives
died and after a second attack spent a
year recovering in a nursing home, so
she worked at Benenden only part-
time. Her husband, Michael, a music
teacher, was away during the weekInspiring English teacher and owner of many biblically named cats
teaching at a prep school in
Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire.
She was born in 1931 in Emperor’s
Gate, west London, to Frederick
Turner, financial director and
secretary at Rolls-Royce/Bentley
(when the marques shared an owner),
and Ruth (née Hempson). Her
brother Amédée, known as Pat, was
born two years before her and their
childhood was filled with nannies,
known as “nurses”, and a stream of
Rolls-Royces that required testing.
Frederick had been gassed during the
First World War, and died of its after-
effects when Anita was in her teens.
On the eve of the Battle of Britain
Anita’s mother decided to evacuate
the children to a house in Maresfield,
East Sussex but, ironically, shortly
after they arrived and the children
had chosen their bedrooms they saw
a bomb land in the garden. It failed to
explode but Ruth, fearful of further
attacks, rang Temple Grove, the
nearby prep school in Uckfield atwhich her son was about to start, and
asked if she could send Anita too.
Describing the school with its three
lakes, swimming pool and choice of
ready-made friends as “paradise”, the
nine-year-old Anita took to it with
aplomb and a degree of naughtiness.
She rowed a boat out on the lake
without permission, raised the
blackout blinds and ran along the
shooting-range wall while the pupils
were firing. Declared “unmanageable”
she was sent to a couple of all-girl
private schools before being accepted
by Oxford University to read English.
At Lady Margaret Hall she was
reintroduced to a school friend from
Temple Grove. Remembering her
only as an “inky brat”, Michael
Freeland was studying law. At the
time the men’s colleges outnumbered
women’s colleges by 30 to five, and
Anita turned down ten “upsetting and
embarrassing” proposals of marriage
from what she called “the lovey-
doveys” before getting engaged toMichael. In the meantime they had
returned to Oxford for postgraduate
study, Anita for a BLitt in Anglo-
Saxon literature and Michael to
study music.
Living for the rest of their lives in a
white weatherboarded house they
had bought in the mid 1950s in
Rolvenden, Kent, the couple
concentrated on their cats, of which
there were always two, a Siamese and
a “mog”, and to which they gave
biblical names such as Vashti, Moses,
Barnabas, Delilah and Esau. The
Freelands sang in the local church
choir and choral society.
Anita’s close friend at Benenden
was an unmarried housemistress who,
like Anita, had taught Princess Anne
when she was at the school. The two
could often be seen on their days off
in the pub each sipping a pint while
competing with the other over who
could finish the Times crossword first.
Anita made it to the finals of the
Times crossword competition.Although Anita Freeland, as an
English teacher at Benenden School,
a girls’ boarding school in Kent, took
charge of the brightest set, it was said
that such was her gentle ability to
coax the best from her pupils that she
should have taken on the girls in
lower streams. She stayed at the
boarding school for 40 years, a
popular figure with a broad taste in
literature who raised eyebrows in the
1960s when she introduced DH
Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover
to the curriculum. She was
distinguishable by her chirpy dress
sense: silky turquoise shirts, usually
from M&S, ruby and garnet jewellery
and long cotton skirts belted at the
waist that made her appear to float
above the ground.
In her last year at university she
had been left weakened by an attack
of meningitis from which she nearly
Anita Freeland, 89
Anita Freeland created mayhem as the
only girl at her brother’s prep schoolAnne South, a model whom he
had met in London, and they set
off together.
It was a short-lived union and on
their return to Britain the couple soon
divorced. Tony found work lecturing
soldiers on US army bases in
Germany as part of a University of
Maryland European programme.
His second marriage, to the Finnish-
born Helvi Marjatta Ramo, whom he
had met after answering her need for
a lift when she was hitchhiking, took
place at the Finnish embassy in Paris
in 1961 and produced three children:
Susannah, who became a fashion
designer, Mark, a videographer, and
Michael, who is a salesman.
For a couple of years Tony lectured
at the University of Singapore, where
he met his lifelong friend Norman
Sherry, the authorised biographer of
Graham Greene, and went on to the
Ford Foundation in Lebanon as a
lecturer for the Lebanese civil service.
It was not until 1966 that he was
awarded the Chair in economics at
Bradford University, where he stayed
until his retirement in 1983.
After 30 years of marriage Tony
separated from Helvi Marjatta and,
while advising Nigeria’s National
Centre for Economic and
Management Administration, was
introduced to Jacinta, who was 44
years his junior. They married in
Durban, South Africa, in 1998 and a
year later returned to Heysham,
where Tony had spent his childhood.
His grandmother’s house was up for
sale but he overlooked the chance to
buy it in favour of another with a
better view of the bay.
Tony had many management
positions at Bradford University, and
was particularly proud to have been
dean of social sciences and to have set
up the university’s Development and
Project Planning Centre for
Developing Countries. Closer to
home his mentoring was appreciated
by his wife. In 2018 she became one of
25 black female professors out of
more than 21,000 at British
universities. Her achievement is
testament to Anthony’s work in
championing the education of women
to help to eradicate poverty in Africa,
Latin America and southeast Asia.forestry, but on arrival flinched at the
country’s damp and overcast skies
and decided to stay for as short a time
as possible. He switched to
economics, a three-year course, and
his future was sealed.
At Virginia University, which had
awarded him a scholarship to study
for his master’s, Tony found he was
more at home than in Canada, and he
played cricket and enjoyed the
company of the British community.
After completing his doctorate he was
given a teaching post in Libya but,
mindful of the potential for loneliness
in north Africa, decided to seek out a
bride to accompany him. He marriedAnthony Bottomley served in the army before embarking on
an academic career, left, and as a consultant in Africaattend Miss Smith’s
Kindergarten on Cross Cop
until he was nine, when he went to the
Friends’ School in Lancaster, a Quaker
establishment founded in 1690. He
was the only pupil from the school to
get into university but on leaving in
1944 he signed up to the Fleet Air
Arm of the Royal Navy and at the end
of the Second World War volunteered
to join the infantry, where he served
in the Border Regiment and the Black
Watch until 1948.
Set on an academic career, he won
a scholarship to the University of
British Columbia in Vancouver,
Canada, to do a five-year degree inWhen friends joked that the
economics professor John Anthony
Bottomley devoted too many of his
energies to the intellectual growth of
his third wife, a Nigerian
physiotherapy student called Jacinta
Chikaodi Nwachukwu, helping her to
move from a background of poverty
to a position as a British university
professor, it was only half in jest.
Jacinta was encouraged by her
husband to study for a PhD in
economics, advised by him on how to
interview for a job, deliver a lecture
and perform at conferences en route
to achieving her professorship.
In retirement Tony, as he was
known, had moved from the position
of economics professor to consultant
to such organisations as the World
Bank, the United Nations Food and
Agricultural Organisation and the
Organisation for Economic Co-
operation and Development. If he
believed that he could contribute to
the reduction of world poverty it was
by urging women in particular to find
productive employment outside the
home. He was a firm advocate for
women teachers.
Working mainly in Africa, but also
Latin America and southeast Asia,
Tony would spend several months in
a country gathering information on
projects such as education, irrigation,
hospitals and infrastructure before
returning to Britain to write a report
on how to make best use of funds. In
Economics
professor who
took on third
world projects
southeast Asia he researched the
impact on poverty of building a road
connecting China to Thailand, and in
Lesotho he looked at the benefits of
building an irrigation dam.
As a young man Tony had been
encouraged to become a teacher or a
lawyer, but a period spent in a law
firm in Morecambe, Lancashire,
convinced him that he would be
happier as a teacher. He was
born in 1927 in Port
Elizabeth, South Africa,
where his father,
Thomas, worked on
a vineyard, but
when he was six
weeks old his
mother, Muriel
(née Dent), left
the country with
him to return to
Morecambe and
he rarely saw his
father again.
As a single mother in
the 1930s Muriel faced
financial and social
challenges and at the tender age of
five Tony expressed a wish to go and
live with his paternal grandmother,
great-aunt and uncle in Heysham
overlooking Morecambe Bay. His
great-grandfather had owned a
woollen mill in Bradford and it
produced a large enough income to
provide the next generation with a
comfortably run house, including
maids and a chauffeur-driven
Rolls-Royce.
Tony continued to see his mother
every few weeks, normally on a
Sunday, and it was decided that heProfessor Anthony
Bottomley, 93
Remembering loved ones
Ant
an acattendM
Kindergarten
untilhewas nine, wher. He was
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frica,n
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ced
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he tender age ofIf you would like to commemorate
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