My stepfather, Bryan Skipp, who has died aged 92, was a mining and civil engineer who led a colourful life. Although a communist and long-time member of CND, he worked on many sensitive international nuclear power projects. He was also an expert in soil science, an academic and a bon vivant.
Born in Bolton, Lancashire, to Sydney Skipp, a pattern maker, and his wife, Hilda, Bryan attended Bolton boys’ school. His parents, both Methodists, wanted him to go into the ministry but he soon declared himself an atheist.
Instead of doing national service, Bryan spent several years as a miner in Cannock, Staffordshire, and then studied mining engineering at the University of Birmingham, graduating in 1953. It was an influential time in his life. While at Birmingham, George Derwent Thomson, then a professor there, mentored Bryan into communism.
After graduating he went to Paris, where he gained a PhD from the Ecole des Mines. He became a fellow of the Geological Society in 1956, aged 26.
Following his PhD, Bryan started a lifetime job at the engineering consultancy Soil Mechanics, part of the Mowlem organisation. He became an international authority on soil science, but was also involved in civil engineering projects, such as power station demolitions. He published more than 70 papers in academic journals and was a visiting lecturer and examiner at Imperial College London, for more than 30 years.
In the 1960s Bryan married and divorced. A child of his marriage, Gerrard, died of misadventure aged 14. In 1970 he met my mother, Maria Tsaneva, at an engineering conference in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia. They married in 1972 and we all moved to London. I was 15 at the time.
Bryan made sure we adapted to the British way of life – Indian cooking, Royal Society of Arts debates, noisy street politics and sailing in his boat, Cyranka. We all became involved with the British-Bulgarian Society and Bryan was a dedicated member. Though lavish and frequent entertainers, Bryan and Maria never had a car and we lived in a small flat in Brixton.
He also threw himself into south London life, volunteering at the Angell Road adventure playground, the Gresham Centre youth club and for Lambeth Council for Community Relations.
His career flourished while his communist principles never faltered. On occasion, when Bryan was the only person for a job with the relevant skills and expertise, he would loudly proclaim his politics lest someone later point an accusing finger at him for gathering secrets while being a communist and a CND-er. Thus he worked on nuclear power station sitings, nuclear submarine berths and nuclear waste disposal.
Bryan retired at the close of 1994 but went on to work as consultant for 15 years. In the late 1990s he was among an international multidisciplinary delegation that surveyed the crumbling original Chernobyl power station “sarcophagus” and advised on the construction of a new protective shell. In the early 2000s he was involved in helping to devise an international standard on earthquake-resistant structures, under the aegis of the British Standards Institution.
Maria died in 2015. He is survived by me.
