My father, Michael Neal, who has died aged 97, was a housemaster at Eton and then headteacher of Cranborne Chase school for girls in Wiltshire. An educator who listened to the young, he was considered by scores of his pupils to be a kindly, intellectual force for good.
Born in Edgbaston, West Midlands, Michael came from a line of Birmingham button manufacturers on his father’s side, bicycle-makers on his mother’s. He was the son of Margaret (nee Wilson), a nurse, and David Neal, an officer in the first world war, later a chartered accountant; his great-aunt was the suffragette and folk revivalist Mary Neal. Michael relished wartime evacuation from his Birmingham prep school to rural Shropshire; boarding at Winchester less so. He rowed at school, and recalled competing at Henley on the day of the D-day landings.
