My father, Martin Corrick, who has died aged 80, was a novelist and teacher: writing and social justice ran through his life, including in adult and governorship training, and in setting up the Gosport Men’s Shed. He was aware of the local disadvantage and that, together with his own feelings of depression and isolation, led to the establishment of The Shed in 2013, to provide men with companionship and activities. An Isle of Wight filmmaker, David George, made Better Shed Than Dead about it in 2014.
It took hard work and negotiation on Martin’s part in the early years, and it is now a Gosport institution, with 170 members, and has helped to set up other men’s sheds. The members wearing yellow T-shirts appear at every local event.
Martin was born in Radlett, Hertfordshire, the son of Elizabeth Pritchard, a secretary at De Havilland aircraft company, and Denis Corrick, an aircraft engineer at the same firm, and grew up in Bristol. He went to Clifton University, which he hated, and said he was physically abused there. He left school early for a technical internship, but dropped out.
Ultimately, supported by his wife Hilary (née Mapstone), whom he had met at the Bristol Gliding Club in 1968 and married in 1971, he studied for his A-levels. With the help of a state scholarship, he studied English at Hertford College, Oxford, and then trained as a teacher.
He loved sailing, so moved to Southampton to be by the sea, and taught English and drama to Itchen’s sixth form. He was concerned about the opportunities and self-esteem of young people, and was keen to involve them in theater – there were memorable school productions on the outskirts of Edinburgh and at Fort Nelson, near Portsmouth.
He and Hilary, a social worker, were active in the Eastleigh Labor Party in the 1980s; Martin wrote wearily for the Guardian in 1988 that the party ‘descended into factionalism, anger, backstabbing and dogmatism’. They divorced in 1996 and he turned to freelance writing. His work included articles for the Guardian about traveling around the country by narrowboat. In 1997 he was accepted for an MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, and in 2002 he wrote his first novel, The Navigation Log. The New York Times praised its tenderness and “elegiac vision.” After Berlin followed three years later and By Chance in 2008.
Martin was a school director and, together with Nigel Gann, set up governors’ training services for Hampshire County Council. He had a strong preference for supporting and challenging schools. Through this he met his partner, Annie Sayle, a headteacher.
Martin taught writing to adult students at the then New College of Southampton University. Many of his students were older people who had not had much education, and he enjoyed building their confidence in writing.
He was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2015 and four years ago was one of the first people to participate in a clinical trial of lecanemab; it was important to him to do something that could help others. In the last few weeks of his life he was comforted by dreams of sailing the Solent.
He is survived by Annie, his daughters, Freya and I, his grandchildren, Molly and Harriet, and his siblings, Ann, Jenny, Tom and Sarah.