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.
