The writer Elaine Feinstein, who died this week, was inspired by her Russian Jewish heritage.

Born in 1930, Feinstein grew up in Leicester where she went to Wyggleson Grammar School, writing poems from an early age which were published by the school magazine.

At the end of the Second World War she was very affected by news of the death camps. “In this year I became Jewish for the first time,” she said.

Although best known as a poet, Feinstein’s work also included 14 novels, radio plays, television dramas and biographies of literary figures, including Russian poets Marina Tsvetaeva, Anna Akhmatova and Alexander Pushkin.

In 1994 she told the JC: "Quite early on I realised that the interesting thing about me was that I had four Russian grandparents.

"This distinguished me from my friends and added glamour to my life. Later on, it gave me a certain centrality, a sense of belonging to a tradition imbued with a love of language."

She added: "I’m not a polemic writer, not a campaigner. I don’t want to teach anything. What matters to me is to record and express how it feels to be alive to make words that will stand for all time."