My wife, Joanna Barfield, who has died aged 63 of cancer, was a popular Suffolk teacher and active in local art and music circles.
Joanna was head of modern foreign languages at Stradbroke High school in the 1990s before working at Halesworth Middle and Worlingham Middle schools for many years as an English and food technology teacher. After the closure in 2012 of the middle schools in Suffolk, Joanna worked as a supply teacher and was well known in local primary schools.
Joanna was born at Nocton Hall, an RAF station in Lincolnshire, to Ida (nee Saunders), a nurse, and David Barfield, an RAF regiment policeman. She spent some of her childhood in Kenya, Singapore and Italy with her three older brothers before state boarding school at Wymondham college, Norfolk. Joanna studied French and German at King’s College London and trained as a teacher at Trinity Hall, Cambridge.
