Deborah Lavin

• WHEN I first came across Deborah Lavin it was clear within a few minutes that I was in the presence of a remarkable person, (Scintillating, flashing star of the firmament, March 27).

I was interviewing her about a lecture series she was organising at Conway Hall titled The British Business of Slavery.

She had been inspired to do so after she discovered that her daughter’s primary school in West Hampstead had been named after William Beckford, twice mayor of London, philanthropist and champion of the arts.

Somehow, the fact that he was also one of the biggest plantation owners in Jamaica had been overlooked.

As she railed against how his ill-gotten gains had enabled him to be whitewashed by history so that even little children now proudly bore his name on their school jumpers, a few no doubt descendants of his former slaves, she pointed out how all wealth is based on exploitation.

“The glamour of wealth disguises its origins and we are encouraged to adore it,” she said. “That is how the slave owners got away with it and that is why we must ask ethical questions about how goods are produced.”

Some years later our paths converged again and I came to look forward to hearing her views on all manner of things as she made links between seemingly disparate subjects and cut through the cant of what passes for public discourse.

Never dogmatic, and full of warmth and wit, she had ears for you, too, and that is what made her such pleasant company.

I realise from the fulsome tributes made at her funeral last week and elsewhere, that Deborah touched a great many lives with her boundless energy and fearless questioning, and I would add, sense of humanity, qualities that remained undiminished by the illness that was to so cruelly cut short her life.

ANGELA COBBINAH