Graham Pechey obituary

My father, Graham Pechey, who has died aged 75, had a lifelong love of literature and an enriching conversational and writing style – qualities that he employed as a literary scholar and lecturer.

Born in sub-tropical Durban, South Africa, son of Dorothy (nee Hemphill), a housewife, and Noel, a bank clerk, Graham had a typical colonial childhood. He came to see South Africa – riven as it was by racial segregation – through an increasingly critical lens while studying and teaching English at the then University of Natal. In 1961, Graham left the Liberal party for the radical Congress of Democrats, which was allied with the African National Congress (ANC), a decision that friends marked as courageous.