CHARLES Swaisland, who spent 30 years working in Africa and Asia before serving the people of Kennington, has died, aged 92.

Dr Swaisland was a district officer in Nigeria, observed South African elections and helped the Chinese resistance during the Second World War.

He went on to serve on Kennington Parish Council, fight the closure of Kennington Library and fundraised for the Kennington Overseas Aid group.

He died at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford on July 2 following a heart attack.

The lifelong Quaker was born in Southend, Essex, in 1919, but was brought up and went to school in Chester.

He went on to serve in the Quaker Medical Transport Brigade and worked demobilising troops returning from the war.

It was there, in 1945, that he met his future wife, Cecillie. They married a year later.

Dr Swaisland was sent by the Red Cross and Foreign Office to China, where he drove supplies for the resistance against the Japanese.

On returning to the UK, he was accepted into the colonial service.

Between 1949 and 1963, he was a district officer in Nigeria. After the country’s independence in 1960 he was asked to stay on and was later presented with the robes of the Ibo tribal chief.

He donated the robes to the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford.

Following his time in Nigeria, Dr Swaisland studied for and received a doctorate in public administration at Linacre College, Oxford. He went on to teach the subject at Birmingham University and was often seconded to different parts of the world, including to train district officers in Sudan.

In 1983, Dr Swaisland and his wife took early retirement and moved to Kennington.

Dr Swaisland served on Kennington Parish Council and, in 2000, formed the Friends of Kennington Library to help save the village’s under-threat service.

In 1994,Dr Swaisland and his wife were sent by the World Council of Churches to be peace monitors for South Africa’s first democratic elections.

Dr Swaisland leaves his wife Cecillie, daughters Alison and Ruth, two grandchildren and one great grandchild. His funeral will take place at Oxford Crematorium on Monday at 11.15am.