My friend and former colleague Anne Turvey, who has died aged 73 of multiple system atrophy, worked for nearly 30 years at the University of London’s Institute of Education, where she was a mainstay of its English teacher training and MA programmes. Before that she taught English for 15 years at St Angela’s Ursuline school in Forest Gate, east London.
She also played a leading role in the London Association for the Teaching of English, and helped to initiate a national boycott of Sats tests in 1993. Later she was its chair between 1997 and 2018.
Anne was born in Ponca City, Oklahoma, one of the seven children of Bob Turvey, a chemical engineer, and his wife, Marie (nee Whitehead), a dental assistant. In 1963, when she was 12, the family moved from Texas to Weybridge, Surrey, for her father’s work.
The transition to the UK was not an entirely seamless one: Anne would recall the family’s horror at the abysmal quality of English ice-cream (and much other food besides), and one of her younger brothers was infuriated when confronted with the indignity of having to wear school uniform.
At St Maur’s convent school in Weybridge she emerged with the capacity to mimic, with comic relish, the Irish nuns who taught her. She then went on to study English at St Hugh’s College, Oxford.
Anne was an accomplished – and funny – raconteur, a talent that was integral to her skill as a lecturer at the Institute of Education. She moved brilliantly between recounting stories of moments in lessons towards ideas of language and learning, culture and identity. Her family life also provided a rich source of stories – from her sisters’ shared enthusiasm, as adolescent readers and writers, for Mills and Boon romances, to one of her nephew’s early refashioning of Arthurian legend.
Her cultural life was rich and varied – she loved going to concerts, opera, dance and art exhibitions. She was equally happy talking about the Archers, gory medical programmes or the latest Yotam Ottolenghi recipe.
Every summer, when she visited her mother in Houston, she would return laden with what she called “Texas treasures” – anything from car bumper stickers to small plastic armadillos emblazoned with the state’s flag – which would then adorn various parts of the Institute of Education’s offices, much to the puzzlement of students.
She is survived by six siblings and 12 nieces and nephews.
