A co-founder of the Canterbury Society, Ken Pinnock, has died.

In a personal tribute, Bill Charlton looks back over the life of a remarkable Canterbury man

Ken Pinnock, who died on October 31, was a remarkable man.

As much as anything, though, he was a Canterbury man. He knew the city better than anyone now living, and his death breaks a significant link with the past.

Born and brought up in the city, he developed a passion for its historical fabric and unique ambience and, as a firewatcher, he was present when so much was destroyed in the Second World War.

Dismayed at the brutal approach to much post-war reconstruction he joined with others of a like mind to form the Canterbury Society, which was influential in shifting official planning policy towards conservation.

His work in this and many other notable local groups was of inestimable value, and was recognised in 2006 with a Civic Award – an honour that, with typical modesty, he initially turned down.

Ken was born in 1919 into a middle-class family (his father was a coal merchant and haulier) and attended the Simon Langton Grammar School for Boys from 1928-38. He was a clever pupil, and won a scholarship to Oriel College, Oxford.

He delighted in recalling that this achievement, rare in its day, was recognised by the granting of a half-day holiday, not just to his own school, but also to the Girls’ Langton, where his future wife, Joyce, was a pupil.

Studies at Oxford were interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War, but he failed an Army medical, and found himself back in Canterbury, teaching history at his old school.

His recollections of Canterbury life during these years are recorded in A Canterbury Childhood, to be published early next year.

Ken joined the publishing firm John Murray in 1953, appointed not without some misgivings (according to in-house recollection), because he looked so much like a schoolboy.

The outcome, though, was brilliant, and he is remembered in the business as one of the key stars of his generation. He created an educational list within John Murray that proved to be dazzlingly successful (and vital to the company at a time when its finances were going through choppy waters).

One of his science text-books, Mackean’s Introduction to Biology, sold 11 million copies and was translated into 20 languages.

His success brought tempting offers from competitors, but he remained loyal to John Murray for the rest of his working life, leaving the firm with an educational division that punched well above its weight.

More broadly, as chairman of the Educational Publishing Council, he led a successful lobby seeking better funding for books in schools.

Ken married Joyce, his childhood sweetheart, in 1942. He was immensely proud of his children and their achievements – Christine in education, Trevor in music, Melvin (who died in an accident in 1990) as an artist blacksmith and Anna in film-set design. In the last decade of his life he was faced with the daunting challenge of looking after Joyce, as she became increasingly ill.

It was a challenge to which he responded magnificently, caring for her at their home until his own frailty made that task impossible.

Ken’s life with Joyce was described by a close friend as an ongoing love story, and there is little doubt that he felt her loss, only a few months ago, very deeply.

Those whose lives were touched by him, and who benefited from his kindly, wise and tactful advice, will have felt a sense of personal loss at his passing.

There are probably not many people about whom it can truly be said that we shall not see their like again, but Ken Pinnock, of Canterbury, was certainly one of them.