My mother, Daphne Garcia Lora, who has died aged 98, was a secondary school teacher known for her calm authority and generosity that shaped generations of pupils. During her long career at King Edward VI high school for girls in Birmingham, she rose to become head of modern languages, overseeing Oxbridge and Ucca (now Ucas) admissions. She took great pleasure in the success of her pupils and contributed to the school's academic reputation for excellence.
Born in Manchester to Elizabeth Poole, a landlady and cafe owner, and Mark Blankstone, a furniture manufacturer, Daphne was raised in Liverpool and evacuated during the second world war to Blaenau Ffestiniog in north Wales. She was later reunited with her mother and younger sister, Betty, in a cottage beneath the Cnicht mountain in Snowdonia (her parents had separated by then).
Despite the absence of electricity or running water, she remembered that time as idyllic: listening to goats on the roof, fishing by hand for trout and cycling fortnightly to the library for books. The experience fostered both resilience and a lifelong love of learning.
A gifted pupil, Daphne won a scholarship to Birkenhead grammar school, commuting daily across the Mersey before being offered lodging with a friend's family nearby. This act of kindness left a deep impression and later informed her pastoral commitment as a teacher. She was known to offer practical and emotional support to pupils whose home lives were troubled, including, on occasion, a place to live so that they could complete their education.
In the mid-1940s Daphne studied French at Liverpool University, where she met José Garcia Lora, a Spanish republican exile, academic and playwright, through the university drama society; a talented seamstress, Daphne had volunteered to help in the costume department. After a year abroad in Aix-en-Provence, she graduated with first-class honours and married José in 1949. Together they shared a passion for literature, theatre, art and travel, dividing family life between Birmingham in term-time and Barcelona in the school holidays with José's parents.
She spent most of her working life at King Edward's, teaching French and Spanish, and taught English in schools in Mexico City when José had sabbaticals there in 1964 and 1968.
Daphne became interested in leftwing politics and was a Labour voter until her final protest vote in the general election in 2024 over Gaza. An atheist influenced by existentialist thinkers, she nonetheless defended the right of others to believe, combining tolerance with a no-nonsense clarity.
Widowed shortly after retiring in the late 1980s, she adapted with quiet resolve, travelling widely, studying cosmology and helping raise her three grandchildren. She faced her final illness with stoicism and dry humour.
She is survived by her daughters Natalia and me and three grandchildren.