My father, Jeremy Goring, who has died aged 93, spent 20 years teaching mid-16th century Tudor history at Goldsmiths, University of London, ultimately becoming dean of humanities there before taking early retirement in 1987.
While at Goldsmiths he was a pioneer of “history on the ground”, a hands-on approach to teaching local and regional (rather than national) history that involved taking students all over the south-east of England to sites of historical interest in a college minibus.
Jeremy was born in Hassocks, West Sussex, to Leonard, who worked for Gorings, the family advertising agency in London, and his wife, Elsie (nee Bibby). Both his parents came from radical nonconformist backgrounds, which had a great influence on their son, not least in his lifelong vegetarianism and his interest in natural healing and non-violent resistance. After attending Brighton and Hove grammar school he studied history at New College, Oxford and completed a PhD at London University, before entering the Unitarian ministry.
His church in Lewisham became well known across London when, in 1959, it opened its doors on Christmas Day to all those who would otherwise have been alone. That pioneering scheme ran for six years, and exhausted though Jeremy invariably was by the end of the day, each time he felt “a glow of satisfaction such as I had never before experienced at Christmas”.
In 1958 he married Rosemary Blake. By 1965 the third of their four children had been born, and, needing a more substantial income than his stipend, he gave up his ministry so that he could teach history at West Greenwich secondary modern school in nearby Deptford, where he survived largely because the class ringleader took a shine to him. Finding it tough going, after two years he applied for the job at Goldsmiths.
Having retired from that post, Jeremy trained as a psychotherapist, volunteering for the charity Freedom from Torture and became honorary minister of Westgate chapel in Lewes, East Sussex, working to reconcile the town’s religious denominations in recognition of the unease that many Catholics there feel around Bonfire Night, when an effigy of Pope Paul V is traditionally burned in the town.
In the early 1990s Jeremy joined the Nigerian-based Brotherhood of the Cross and Star, making frequent visits to Africa. In 1997 he almost died after contracting cerebral malaria, but recovered and went on to write Burn Holy Fire! (2003), a religious history of Lewes, and then a biography of the Spanish poet Antonio Machado, published in 2020 when he was 90.
Jeremy also wrote a large number of historical articles, mainly about Sussex, and was a prolific letter-writer to the Guardian. A kind and compassionate man, he was an affectionate and loving father, grandfather and husband.
He is survived by Rosemary, his children, Charlie, George, Danny and me, five grandchildren and by his brother Roger.
