My wife, Teresa Collingwood Smith, has died after a short illness, aged 82. Like her father, RG Collingwood, a philosopher and archaeologist, and her grandfather, WG Collingwood, an artist, writer and secretary to John Ruskin, Teresa is hard to pigeonhole. She was a successful Oxford academic, and also an experienced community organiser and activist with the ability to act as a catalyst for others.
From an early age, Teresa, her mother Kate (nee Edwardes), and grandmother, lived with another family in a rambling house in Essex that was full of art and artists. Women were wholly in charge, and the source of Teresa’s view that women not just “could” or “should” be, but often were, very effectively in charge.
