My mother, Alison Weir, who has died aged 82, was an inspirational educator, author and historian. She presided over a noisy, open, welcoming north London house full of waifs and strays from all points of the compass, as well as her own four children, in the 1970s and 80s.

Born Alison Walker to an intellectual Borders family in Melrose, she went to Somerville College, Oxford, during the second world war before marrying my father, Michael Weir, as he embarked on a career in the diplomatic service. Although they had four devoted children - myself, my artist brother Matthew, the comic actor and author Arabella, and Christina, the youngest - my mother, though enthralled by the Middle East, dreaded a stultifying future of diplomatic hostess duties, feeling the pull of the women's movement in the late 1960s. Her struggle to emancipate herself was painful and not without casualties, but ultimately enriched her life and those of all around her.

After a spell as a part-time teacher, she taught A-level English at Camden School for Girls. She had a rich literary life too, writing books, articles and reviews for a variety of publications. She joined the editorial board of the feminist Virago Press in 1976.

Alison co-authored a book on women in history and also dragged knitting from the realm of the domestic towards recognition as a skilled craft. For a period, she knitted highly decorative garments on demand, under the brand "Knit me one too", which was based on toilet-wall graffito which she found hilarious: "My mother made me a homosexual," it said, beneath which was written: "If I gave her the wool, would she knit me one too?"

In her later years, she dedicated herself to the study of the compelling history of her Ayrshire forebears, who had left a huge correspondence from the early 19th century onwards, centred on their emigration to Australia for the Bendigo gold rush and their ultimate tragic return to Scotland amid death and disease. She was, fortunately, able to complete this labour of love, which is now an important historical archive lodged with museums in Scotland and Australia, about a year before she died.

In the twilight of her life, her home bloomed again, as her children and their spouses, and then eight grandchildren, clattered about. They survive her.