HAROLD Marks, much loved former chairman of the Belsize Residents Association, who has died aged 91, was something of a Renaissance man.
Based in Belsize Square, Belsize Park, for the latter part of his life, friends and neighbours remember not only a highly regarded chairman but an extremely intelligent educationalist, passionate about adult education, a keen gardener and an excellent cook.
The former school inspector’s five-year tenure as chairman of BRA from 1990 to 1995 was characterised, according to fellow committee member and later chairwoman Diana Self, by a sense of gravitas.
She said: “He was an extremely good chairman. He had a great sense of balance in the way he handled different views amongst the membership.
“He cared deeply about our local environment, spending many hours monitoring planning applications and the extensive surveys we carried out about parking controls.”
Mollie Barger, 85, a historian from South Hill Fields, who struck up an enduring friendship with Harold after meeting him in the 1960s, said he was a “very civilised” man.
She said: “He was highly intelligent. He loved music, loved the opera, was a brilliant cook and he had a very observant eye. He was also very kind.
“In the last few years of his life, he became very disappointed in the way that adult education was being eroded in favour of vocational qualifications, undermining many of the things that he cherished.”
Mr Marks (pictured), a lifelong member of the Labour Party, was born in West Hampstead, the son of a bank clerk and educated at Caterham School Surrey and University College, Oxford.
A period in South Wales during the depression of the early 1930s to work with mining families established his lifelong commitment to the principles of adult and post-school education.
In 1951, he was appointed one of Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Education, a post he held until his retirement in 1979. In later life he remained active, both with his membership of BRA where he sat on the committee until 2000 and with his involvement with the National Voluntary Youth Organisation, amongst other projects.
His wife, artist and potter Margaret Marks, who he married in 1938, died some years before him in the late 1980s. He is survived by a daughter.

SUNITA RAPPAI