My mother, Margaret Bowman, who has died aged 103, was a distinguished Australian academic and writer. She wrote and edited many books about local government and communities, and is best known for Reformers: Shaping Australian Society from the 60s to the 80s, co-written with the journalist Michelle Grattan.
Born in Leeds, the youngest of two daughters of Flora (nee Johnson) and Herbert Stanton, a teacher, Margaret went to Leeds girls high school, then studied domestic science and trained as a teacher at the Yorkshire Training College of Housecraft. While teaching domestic science at Oxford high school, she met John Bowman at a political meeting in the city, where he was undertaking a DPhil. They were married in 1944 and went on to have a large family.
