My father, John Darrah, who died at the age of 98, worked for the family’s plumber merchants until the takeover in the early 1970s and took the opportunity to pursue his longstanding interest in British history.
His central idea was that Britain’s legends and folk tales are based on real people and events, and his theories have been published in two books, The Real Camelot: Paganism and the Arthurian Romances (1981) and Paganism in Arthurian Romance (1994).
John was born in Stockport to the eldest son of Herbert Darrah, who ran the family business, and his wife Daisy (nee Black). He attended Wrekin College in Shropshire and then Peterhouse, Cambridge.
There, on a summer day, John went to a market to buy strawberries. When he returned to his room, he opened the window to let in some air. A young woman he only vaguely knew, Elizabeth Smith, cycled by and looked up to see what was going on. John invited them to share his strawberries; they married in 1948.
They had three children, Richard, Peter and me. My father took us on an adventurous vacation and had the car shipped to a Spanish port before heading back to the UK for several weeks. The family lived in a previously derelict Cheshire farmhouse that John had renovated. Back then everyone thought he had lost his footing in wanting to live in such a dilapidated old building, but he made it a splendid home.
In 1946 he started working for the family business Baxendales and took over management before the company was sold in 1970. In the next three years he turned to the historical sciences – and continued this work after his training as a VAT. continued inspector in London in 1973.
Elizabeth died of cancer in 1981 at the age of 59, and John retired six years later.
Later, when old age took its toll, he lived on his own – for a while in the family home with his granddaughter Kim and a young crowd of lodgers who, when they returned from a night of clubs, were still tinkering around and eager to find one last drink with them and swap stories from the nightlife past and present.
John is survived by Peter and me and four grandchildren Rowan, Robin, Laura and Kim. Richard died in 2017.