VETERAN Conservative city and county councillor Janet Todd has died aged 88.

Friends say her health deteriorated last year and she had been living in a nursing home.

The former Lord Mayor of Oxford began her political career in the city in 1965, and in 2000 planned a comeback at the age of 83 by standing for the Tories in the county council elections, but she was not elected.

She was keen to oppose the scrapping of middle schools in Oxford in 2000, when reorganisation was taking place to switch from a three-tier to two-tier education system in the city.

Janet Todd came from just outside Glasgow and seemed at first destined for an academic career, with a first-class honours degree in classics from Glasgow University, and another first in classical honour moderations from Lady Margaret Hall in Oxford.

She lectured in classics at several universities, but then she met James Maclean Todd, and when he became headmaster at Stowe she decided "I wasn't high-powered enough to bring up children and carry on a career and be a headmaster's wife."

She spent 15 years raising her son and daughter, and from the vantage point of a headmaster's wife, gained an inside view of how a school is run.

This information turned out to be useful when she embarked on a career in politics in the mid-1960s in Oxford, which lasted 32 years.

Her husband had become Oxford Secretary for the Oxford and Cambridge Schools Examination Board and Mrs Todd was elected to the Cherwell ward of the city council, winning the seat from the Liberal Democrats.

Education was the spur when she first stood for a county council position in 1977. Once on the council, she lost a fight to keep a middle school open, but succeeded in saving a nursery school.

She also fought successfully for free transport to Roman Catholic schools and on the non-educational front, to keep a giant rubbish crusher from blighting the dreaming spires of Oxford.

In 1983-1984, Mrs Todd was Lord Mayor of Oxford, which meant greeting the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh when they visited the city.

In 1989, Mrs Todd, then of Foxton Lodge, Linkside Avenue, North Oxford, told how her days were filled with phone calls, meetings, and around election time, door-to-door canvassing.

She said: "I love canvassing the other day I was out for seven hours on end. I like meeting people and discovering their problems and, incidentally, hoping to get their vote. I don't always succeed but I am very seldom rebuffed."

Her husband, with whom she wrote two books on classical literature, died in December 1988 following a long illness.

Her daughter worked as a barrister while her son worked in the City and at the time she had one grandson.

Former Conservative city councillor Graham Jones said: "I was just a slip of a councillor in 1983 when I accompanied Janet to Oxford's twin town Bonn. She was Lord Mayor at the time and she carried the role very well.

"She was obviously from Scotland but she adopted Oxford as her city and she fought very hard for it.

"She was a tenacious battler for people both as a city and county councillor.

"If she believed in something, she fought very hard for it, which meant we all had disagreements with her from time to time.

"It's a sad loss for the city of Oxford."

Tory county councillor Charles Shouler added: "She was a doughty fighter for the interests of her constituents.

"She was a very persistent and accomplished councillor and a fine speaker with a sharp Scottish turn of phrase."

Derek Holmes, the editor of The Oxford Times, said: "Janet Todd was a fearless campaigner who left no stone unturned in her fight for what she believed was right.

"She knew Oxford like the back of her hand and used a direct line to chief officers, heads of college and editors in furtherance of her cause.

"Janet understood the power of the Press and was a great reader and friend of The Oxford Times. We shall miss her."