Family & Community
I live in East Oxford. The residents’ association, DRARA (Divinity Road Area Residents’ Association) is very active. I was a member of the committee for five years to 2015, first as Secretary and then Chair. I have been a local councillor for the area, and am active in Oxford & District Labour Party, a member of its Executive, Chair of the East Oxford branch, and of the City Local Government Committee. I am on of the Oxford East CLP delegates to the 2023 Labour Party Conference in Liverpool. I represent the Co-operative Party on the Executive Committee of the Oxford & District Labour Party and am Secretary of the Oxfordshire Co-operative Party.
Through Low Carbon East Oxford I had 1.7kW of solar panels installed on my south-west facing roof in November 2010.
I have two daughters. My younger daughter Alice, graduated from the London School of Economics in 2013. She was awarded Harold Laski Scholarship for the best ‘first’ overall in her year. She has been working at a school in east London, and with its charitable offshoot and specialises in Oracy.
My older daughter Nadine, graduated from University College London in 2010 with a first class degree in English Literature and moved to Glasgow University. She is now living and working in Edinburgh.
I have two sisters. My youngest sister Claudia is a ceramicist. ‘The Pot Book’ which she co-authored with Edmund de Waal was published by Phaidon in October 2011. You can catch up on her current and recent exhibitions at her website. Her book ‘Subversive ceramics’ was published by Bloomsbury in January 2016.
The other artist in my immediate family was my dad’s cousin, Frank Martin (1921-2005). The family has launched a website about his life and a number of his works are for sale through the site.
The family has strong military connections. My uncle Martin Stott was a Royal Marine (having previously been an art student) and was killed aged 22 on the first day of the Battle of Salerno in Italy in September 1943. My great uncle Frank Henry Martin was killed in northern France near the end of WW1 in March 1918 aged 20. The 75th and 100th anniversaries respectively of their deaths in 2018 were marked in appropriate fashion.
The family has Irish connections through my mother, a Hegarty. The family come from Skibbereen, Co Cork where a local saying has it, ‘Everyone dies when their time is up, except the Hegarty’s who die when they want to.’ The family is notoriously long-lived, and my mother Clare who died in October 2016 aged 94, was no exception.
