TRIBUTES have been paid to a former history teacher at Lancing College who has died at the age of 82.

Christopher Kemp, who loved American politics and specialised in the rise of the Nazis, Hitler and the Third Reich in 1930s Germany, taught at the renowned independent school from 1973 until his retirement in 1997.

His daughter Nicola Lawrence, also a teacher, described him as “an incredibly kind and non-judgemental” man.

“He was incredibly intelligent but not very good at real life,” she said.

“I think it was because he lived in the world of schools.

“He never learnt to cook or to drive, for example. We lived in Ring Road in Lancing, where our house back on to the Downs and he would walk to work every day.”

Mr Kemp, who was also active in local politics, studied European history at Oxford.

His first teaching job was at Haileybury College in Hertfordshire, where he met his future wife Jennifer, the school matron.

When Nicola, their only child, was very little, the family lived in South Africa for a year before Mr Kemp took up his post at Lancing College.

His colleague Jeremy Tomlinson recalled him as a “much respected colleague”.

“He gave more than beyond the call of duty to his pupils,” said Mr Tomlinson.

“He was an Oxford graduate and very scholarly, very bright, who became very interested in the rise of the Nazis.

“He was very short – he was little but very dynamic.

“He compensated by being a livewire and had a very subversive sense of humour.

“He was also very perceptive about people and was very funny – he would say the most unexpected things.”

Nicola, 48, who is married and lives in Southwater, recalled a childhood home in Lancing where the hallway was filled with shelves of books on Hitler and Stalin.

She said: “It all seemed perfectly normal to me because it had always been like that.”

Mr Kemp and his wife separated amicably in 1980.

“My father’s parents had been through a difficult divorce and my father was determined that I would not go through that,” said Nicola, who is head of English at Handcross Park School.

“My parents made it very easy for me.”

“He was a wonderful, thoughtful father, very loving .”

Mr Kemp was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in April this year and died of pneumonia on October 26.