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Heather Tanner (14 July 1903 – 23 June 1993), ''née'' Heather Muriel Spackman,〔 was a writer and campaigner on issues relating to peace, the environment and social justice. She worked in close collaboration with her husband, Robin Tanner, at their home in Kington Langley, Wiltshire. ==Biography== Heather Tanner was born as Heather Spackman at 'Rose Cottage', Priory Street, Corsham, Wiltshire on 14 July 1903. Her parents were Daisy Goold (1865–1945) and Herbert Spackman (1864–1949), who had three daughters, Sylvia, Heather and Faith (Olive). Herbert Spackman, an accomplished musician and photographer, ran a grocery and drapery store in Corsham High Street. Heather Tanner and her younger sister, Faith Sharp, edited an account of their father’s early life, ''A Corsham Boyhood: The Diary of Herbert Spackman 1877–1891''. Heather Tanner attended Chippenham Grammar School, where she met her future husband, the etcher and teacher Robin Tanner. In his autobiography, ''Double Harness'', Robin recounts how, as school prefects he and Heather would smuggle secret messages to each other in the absentee registers for which they were responsible as their relationship blossomed in the early 1920s.〔Robin Tanner, ''Double Harness: An Autobiography''(London: Impact, 1987), 21.〕 Heather achieved a First Class degree at King's College London, which she left in 1929 to become an English teacher at The Duchess School for Girls, Alnwick Castle, Northumberland.〔See account in ''An Exceptional Woman The Writings of Heather Tanner'', ed. by Rosemary Devonald (Salisbury: Hobnob Press, 2006).〕 After a brief geographical separation while Robin studied at Goldsmiths College, London, Heather and Robin married at Corsham Church, 4 April 1931. Heather wore a dress that Robin had designed at the wedding. Heather and Robin Tanner moved to Kington Langley, Wiltshire, after their wedding, the start of a lifelong creative collaboration and residence. In ''Double Harness'', Robin Tanner writes that Heather’s uncle, the architect Vivian Goold, 'generously offered as a wedding gift to design a house for us and supervise its building if we could find a piece of land we liked'.〔Robin Tanner, Double Harness, 45.〕 The result was Old Chapel Field, completed in 1931. The house, which is still standing in the village, is a distinctive blend of arts and crafts and modernist styles, both charming and functional. Inspired by Charles Francis Annesley Voysey, Goold came to regard the house as the finest that he had designed. Heather and Robin had great affection for the 'Voyseyish' Old Chapel Field where they were to live for the rest of their lives. The Tanners were thrilled to discover that Francis Kilvert’s great-grandfather was buried in the graveyard of the Chapel from which their home took its name Old Chapel Field and both Heather and Robin actively supported the Kilvert Society. Not all was idyllic for the Tanners however. In the of spring 1939 the Tanners took in a young Jewish refugee from Germany called Dietrich Hanff (1920–1992). Shortly after the outbreak of WWII, Hanff was interned and held as an enemy alien at Bury, Lancashire. Heather campaigned against what she considered his unfair treatment in the press and eventually she was allowed to visit him after his transfer to the Isle of Man. It was later learned that his parents and brother were deported from their native Stettin (then Germany) to Piaski, Poland and that the Germans murdered them there in gas chambers.〔Heather Tanner and Dietrich Hanff, ''Out of Nazi Germany: An Account of the Life of Dietrich Hanff'' (London: Impact, 1995), iv.〕 After Hanff finally gained his freedom as the Tanners’ adopted son, ‘Dieti’ was to closely share their interests, to become a teacher and university lecturer and to live at Old Chapel Field for the rest of his life. Also during the Second World War, Heather suffered serious illness and underwent a hysterectomy in Chippenham Cottage Hospital where she remained from the end of 1940 until March 1941.〔Robin Tanner, Double Harness, 120.〕 After the War Heather worked as an examiner in English for the University of Cambridge and later at the University of London.〔Robin Tanner, ''Double Harness'', 123.〕 Heather Tanner’s moral and spiritual outlook as a Quaker, shared with Robin, was to deeply affect her outlook and support for a range of environmental and social causes. She was an active member of the Chippenham branch of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament〔 (visiting the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp and attending many Aldermaston marches) and supporter of Friends of the Earth and Oxfam. During the 1980s BBC television producer Margaret Benton made a film called ''Look Stranger: A Vision of Wiltshire'' which was released in 1987. This documented and celebrated Heather, Robin and Dieti’s home life, creativity, beliefs and love of the Wiltshire countryside. Outliving both her husband and Dietrich Hanff, Heather Tanner died at Kington St Michael on 23 June 1993. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Heather Tanner」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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