Marjorie Reeves (1905-2003) was a Fellow of St Anne’s College, Oxford, and a distinguished scholar whose great interest was the medieval mystic Joachim of Fiore.

But she had also taught history to schoolchildren and passionately believed that education should be fun, and should involve the whole person. She had a deep sense of social responsibility, was involved with the Christian Left, and refused to retreat into an ivory tower.

Her memoirs, The Life and Thought of Marjorie Reeves: Advocate for Humanist Scholarship and Opponent of Utilitarian University Education, edited by Anthony Sheppard (Edwin Mellen Press, £79.95), give some vivid glimpses of a Wiltshire childhood in the early 20th century, and of Oxford in wartime, and I was glad to find out about this remarkable and inspiring woman.