The adult life of my friend Robert Fyson, who has died aged 83, fell into two halves, divided between two partners and two very different parts of the British Isles.
During the 1960s and 70s, with his wife, Michaela (nee Fordham), Robert was a history lecturer at Staffordshire Polytechnic (now Staffordshire University) and lived in Newcastle-under-Lyme, where, among much else, he was a stalwart of the local CND group, founder of the Stephen Swingler lectures, which brought leftwing speakers to the town, and a Liberal party councillor who stood for parliament in the local constituency twice in 1974, coming a respectable third on both occasions.
