With the death of Doreen Cronin, the anti-hunting movement has lost one of its most eloquent, passionate and hard-working champions. She was, not to put too fine a point on it, not cast in the usual mould of campaigners.

But, together with a Conservative Somerset county councillor, Diane Wilson, quickly dispelled the myth that the hunters enjoyed the overwhelming, if tacit, support of the middle classes.

About 20 years ago they formed their own deer protection society in the wake of one of the most shocking and barbaric episodes in hunting history, when a stag was driven to take refuge from the hounds of the Devon and Somerset Hunt on the roof of an Exmoor cottage.

The widespread publicity the incident attracted re-ignited the whole public debate over hunting, and from then on there was barely a day in her life when Doreen was not working assiduously to have the activity outlawed.

While hunt monitors compiled dossiers of evidence based on activities out in the field, Doreen pursued a quietly determined campaign of lobbying and letter-writing, with the National Trust – owner of a huge tract of prime hunting land on Exmoor – as one of her first targets.

It was largely due to her efforts – and despite the attempts by hunt supporters to infiltrate and take over its ruling council – that the trust eventually banned stag- hunting from its land and tightened up the activities of fox- hunting by insisting on all hunts being licensed. The monumental outrage experienced by one branch of the establishment at this slap in the face by another was all too obvious.

This was, perhaps, the first tangible sign that stag-hunting had lost its veneer of glamour, romance and history and was being seen for the distasteful activity that it was.

But that success merely spurred Doreen on to redouble her efforts, and she and others worked towards a complete hunting ban. Along the way, she endured the predictable tirades of spleen from her opponents.

But she was never diverted nor discouraged, even when it was a case of persuading the Labour administration that a Hunting Act was necessary proved so much more of a challenge than had been expected.

Doreen, who lived in a Quantocks village, was mild-mannered, gently spoken and sweet-natured but, underlying all those traits, was a gritty determination to put an end to animal cruelty inflicted in the name of sport.

That determination even earned her a degree of grudging respect from some of those on the opposite side of the fence – even though their approbation was hardly what she would have sought, or enjoyed.

We shall all miss her greatly.