A WRITER and peace campaigner involved in the first anti-nuclear marches of the 1950s has died at the age of 96.

Lady Anne Piper devoted much of her life to campaigning for peace and tolerance.

She walked in the anti-nuclear Aldermaston marches and served as a director of the Oxford Research Group, a think-tank promoting sustainable alternatives to violent global confrontation, providing a base for the group at her home, Overford Farm.

Lady Piper also founded TalkWorks in 2009 along with Rosie Houldsworth to promote discussion around the disarmament agenda.

In addition to her campaigning, she was a prolific writer, producing nine novels and two plays throughout the course of her life. Months before she died her novels were picked up to be published as e-books.

Her son, Tom, a stage designer, collaborated with ceramic artist Paul Cummins in 2014 to create the Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red installation at the Tower of London, which consisted of 888,246 ceramic poppies to commemorate the centenary of the start of the First World War.

Lady Piper was born in Llandaff, South Wales, on December 13, 1920, to parents Oliffe Richmond, a professor of classics at Edinburgh University, and Beryl Griffith.

She spent much of her childhood in Edinburgh and Wales and was educated at Downe House School in Berkshire. She then went up to Cambridge in 1938 to read English, where she met her future husband, Sir David Piper.

Sir David went to fight in Burma in 1941, where he was captured and interned in a prisoner of war camp. Lady Piper was a land girl and later travelled to India as part of the diplomatic corps, where she met Mahatma Ghandi.

The couple married on December 13, 1945, three weeks after Sir David’s return from the conflict.

Soon after, Sir David and Lady Piper had three daughters: Evanthe, Ruth and Emma, and finally their son, Tom, in 1964.

Lady Piper supported her husband during his directorships at The National Portrait Gallery, The Fitzwilliam Museum and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, before they settled in Wytham in 1973.

She was deeply involved in Wytham life, organising summer swimming lessons for children in the area, serving as chairwoman of the parish council, and working with fellow resident Kathy Dawson to prevent the installation of radio masts in Wytham Woods.

Lady Piper died on May 18. She is survived by four children, 11 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.