Professor G. K. Hunter

Brian L. Bishop writes: I was one of the first undergraduates to enter Professor Hunter’s English Department at the University of Warwick (obituary, May 2).

I was a man of 25 with a chaotic educational background and doors were difficult to prise open at that time. I was desperate enough to write directly to Professor Hunter in hyperbolical terms: “I feel I am being crushed by forces that I do not understand. Please open your doors!” I had a letter by return offering me a place.

The professor once told me that he recalled standing at WHSmith’s on Glasgow station reading Penguins at the counter as he could not afford the sixpence to purchase the books.

The resulting humanity changed my life.

Mary Berry

Paul Lewis, Secretary Emeritus, St Edmund Hall Association, writes: An example of the generous enthusiasm of Dr Mary Berry (obituary, May 7) was when she heard, through St Edmund’s College, that all the St Edmund foundations were having a pilgrimage to the shrine of the Saint in Pontigny in north-east France in 1996 to mark the 750th anniversary of his canonisation.

She volunteered to bring over the Schola Gregoriana at their own expense. The effect of the Gregorian chants sung in the 12th-century Cistercian abbey (the largest in France) was an unforgettable memory for all of us.

Dr Berry stayed for the week-long celebrations and, on return to England, kept in close contact with us until her death.

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