Dudley grew up in Norwich, left school at 15 and worked in insurance for 7 years before joining the Merchant Navy. In 1936 he went to the University of Southampton to study languages, and went on to teach in Germany and then Peru with the British Council. In 1942 he returned home to an England at war. He was an internationalist by conviction and an earnest lover of peace, and registered as a conscientious objector, driving ambulances in London.

After the war he married Jean and they both taught in Geneva (where their son Martin was born), Horsham and Wiltshire, where they ran a school together. In 1956 the family, including daughters Alison and Fiona, moved to Penang where Dudley worked at the teacher training college. There he started up an international pen friend club to promote goodwill and understanding between nations, which he continued to run well into retirement.

Dudley loved travel, though not by air, and sport; he was a keen environmentalist, a member of the National Trust and Men of the Trees. He set up three branches of Friends of the Earth, in the Isle of Wight, Southampton and Dartmouth. He said : ‘The one thing that sums up the world’s environmental problems is greed. It is the drive for a higher and higher standard of living… But what is the good of this if you destroy everything in the process?’

He was a man ahead of his time in so many ways.