My mother, Molly Burkett, who has died aged 93, was a writer, wildlife rehabilitator and indefatigable campaigner. Over more than six decades she combined public service, activism and storytelling with the practical business of rescuing animals and people who had fallen through the cracks.
From the 1950s onwards, in parallel with her professional career as a teacher and educational psychologist, Molly developed what became one of Britain’s longest-running private wildlife rehabilitation centres, based at first in Hampshire, and later in Lincolnshire. After marrying John Burkett, an engineer, in 1954, she had begun caring for sick and injured birds and animals at home, work that eventually involved hundreds of creatures at any one time. At first, they lived in a caravan at Lasham airfield, where John was working on the Blue Streak rocket for De Havilland. They later settled near Alton and in 1969, with the help of the RSPCA, moved to Hough-on-the Hill in Lincolnshire.
Molly helped rehabilitate seabirds after the Torrey Canyon oil spill in 1967, supplied captive-bred ravens to the Tower of London, advised the government on wildlife legislation (particularly the 1976 Dangerous Wild Animals Act), and became known for her uncompromising belief that wild animals should be treated with respect rather than sentimentality.
She was a familiar face on television in the early years of wildlife broadcasting, appearing on programmes such as Zoo Time, but she gradually withdrew from regular media work, preferring the deeper reach of books. Starting with High Fly in 1967, she wrote more than 120 books, many inspired by animals in her care and by the lives of people she encountered. Titles such as The Year of the Badger (1972) and Foxes Three (1979) brought her international recognition and were translated into several languages.
Born in Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex, the daughter of Topsy and Jack Preece, who ran a grocer’s shop, Molly grew up acutely aware of social inequality. During the second world war she was evacuated several times, experiences that exposed her both to deprivation and to extraordinary kindness. These early years shaped her fierce sense of justice and her lifelong refusal to accept that hardship was inevitable or acceptable.
A natural storyteller, she began writing as a child and had stories published while still at school. After training at Goldsmiths’ College, London University, as a teacher and educational psychologist, she worked with young children, disabled pupils and, later, with vulnerable adolescents in schools and colleges around the UK. She was an outspoken advocate for equal pay in education and helped to organise marches and petitions in the 50s, challenging ministers directly about poverty and neglect in postwar Britain.
In later life she served as a Home Office inspector of children’s homes, chaired a Home Office board, campaigned successfully against nuclear waste-dumping in Lincolnshire, and continued to support individuals in crisis with tireless, practical help. She was appointed MBE in 2008, and remained creatively active into her 90s, singing with Vicky McClure’s Our Dementia Choir.
My father died in 2012. Molly is survived by two children, my sister, Sophie, and me, and two grandchildren, Seth and Kizzie.
