LIVES REMEMBERED

Commander Ian Inskip Commander Ian Inskip, who has died aged 72, saved his ship after an Exocet attack during the Falklands war. He was on the bridge of Glamorgan on the night of June 11/12 1982 as navigator and officer of the watch. At 0636, looking at the radar screen, he realised that the ship was under attack by an Exocet missile, and ordered full starboard rudder.

“I concentrated very hard on the turn,” he recalled, “since I would need to reverse the wheel at precisely the right moment to steady on 190 degrees if we were to successfully bounce the missile off the ship’s side; I had less than 5 degrees leeway for error… On the bridge we heard a seemingly unremarkable thud, followed almost immediately by a ‘whooomph’ as the fuelled helicopter in the hangar erupted into flame… Night turned into day.”

Inskip’s action in turning the ship undoubtedly saved her from worse damage; nevertheless, 14 men were killed. The fight to save Glamorgan, however, had just begun. Born November 2 1943, died June 24 2016 Les Stocker Les Stocker, who has died aged 73, was an accountant and animal lover who established St Tiggywinkles, Europe’s first wildlife teaching hospital, an endearingly eccentric institution described in one newspaper as “the spiritual heart of Britain”.

In the late 1970s Stocker stumbled across an injured hedgehog and took it to his local vet to see whether it could be treated, but the vet only offered to put the animal to sleep. It was the same story when he took it to the local branch of a major animal charity. So he took it home and cared for it.

Feeling there was a gap in the care provided to sick or injured wild animals, in 1978 Stocker and his wife Sue set up an animal rescue centre in a small shed in the back garden of their home at Aylesbury. “It was a hobby,” he recalled. “I said to the local vets, the police and the RSPCA, ‘If you get any wildlife casualties, let me have them.’ ”

Word soon spread and people who had found ill or injured wild animals began beating a path to the Stockers’ door – including Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees, who pulled up in his Rolls-Royce and dropped off a partridge which had been hit by a car. Soon they were coping with all sorts of animals and, working with a sympathetic local vet, began to develop treatment regimes for wild animals, through a process of trial and error. Eventually Stocker decided to give up accountancy and go into animal rescue full time. Born January 31 1943, died July 16 2016 Helen Bailey Helen Bailey, the author, who has died aged 51, was best known for her teen fiction about a girl called Electra Brown, a cheerful, mouthy 14-year-old schoolgirl obsessed with make-up, snogging, spots and whether she should dye her hair. The first Electra Brown book,

Life at the Shallow End, was published in 2008. Four more would follow in quick succession and in 2010 Bailey was nominated for a Queen of Teen award. Running in Heels (2011) featured a new character, Daisy Davenport, and she also wrote books for younger children.

In recent years she won a very different audience with Planet

Grief, a blog in which she described her struggle to cope with the sudden death of her husband after he drowned during a holiday in 2011. She gained a large following of bereaved readers who found comfort. A book, When Bad Things Happen in Good Bikinis, was published last year.

On July 15 police reported that human remains, later confirmed to be Helen Bailey’s, and those of her miniature dachshund Boris, had been found in a cesspit at her house at Royston. The next day her partner Ian Stewart was charged with her murder. He had reported her missing in April. Born August 22 1964, body found July 15 2016