My wife, Karen Clarke, who has died of cancer aged 60, was a special needs teacher who improved the lives of scores of marginalised young people in south London. Her lessons, influenced by her earlier life as an archaeologist, translator, marketing consultant and cookery book author, were inspirational; and it was this work, and her output as a writer, that gave her a true feeling that she had made a positive and lasting contribution.
Karen was born in Fareham, Hampshire. Her parents had met in Hong Kong; her father, Basil Clarke, was on secondment from the Royal Navy to learn Mandarin, her mother, Yu Ye (later known as Sandra), was a refugee from Shanghai, China, trying to learn English. When Karen was a baby they moved to London, where Basil became a journalist, and joined the BBC World Service. Sandra worked at the Foreign Office as the chief Chinese language teacher to diplomats.
Karen was educated at Putney high school and Westminster school and then went to the School of Oriental and Africa Studies to study Mandarin and archaeology, with a year in China at the Beijing Language Institute. In the mid-1980s she joined the electronics company Racal, as a translator working on sales of military equipment to China. She and I met at a party in 1986 and we married in 1990.
She took a master’s in marketing and business at the University of Westminster and, after working at various consultancies in London, she became marketing director of Coopers and Lybrand in Hong Kong in 1995. On her return she did not want to work in the City so she looked for another occupation.
Our two children were starting school around that time, and Karen saw how children who did not fit into the system were often left to one side. She took a diploma at Hornsey Institute and, as a tutor and teacher in Wandsworth and Merton from 2010 onwards, she specialised in rebuilding self-esteem, enthusiasm and self-confidence. Her main focus was getting pupils to feel as though they were equipped to deal with the challenges put in front of them, bringing back their desire and enthusiasm to learn.
Karen was also a writer. Inspired by her mother’s way of giving British food a Shanghai twist, she wrote the cookery book Shanghai MaMa – Oriental Cuisine for the Knife and Fork (1997). Her last short story, a parody of Hansel and Gretel, was published in the anthology In the Kitchen (2020).
She also wanted to write something that reflected her mixed-heritage family. A master’s degree at Birkbeck College helped her begin to plot out The Handkerchief Tree, a historical novel centred in China, Hong Kong and the UK which, in a small way, was loosely based on her parents’ lives. This was a big and detailed work in progress at the time of her death.
Karen is survived by me and by our children, Toby and Ming.
