When my mother, Jenny Cox, who has died aged 86 of cancer, was admitted to hospice care, she told staff of her passions: her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, plants and the great outdoors – and her concertinas.
She also brought up an old injustice. An adventurous botanist, in her 20s Jenny had planned to do a PhD on the flora of the inhospitable island of South Georgia, in the south Atlantic. However, the British Antarctic Survey vetoed it: no unmarried women. A feminist fire was lit. Jenny’s marriage to my father, Peter, lasted more than 60 years. A hands-on mother of three sons, she retrained as a teacher and worked in primary schools in Bristol.
