Dame Sandra Burslem, who has died aged 83, survived childhood internment by the Japanese in a Shanghai prisoner-of-war camp reminiscent of JG Ballard’s Empire of the Sun to become a leading figure in British higher education. Having been prevented by single motherhood from enrolling at university until she was 28, then juggling her undergraduate studies with the care of her two sons, she later campaigned to make university more accommodating of mature students’ complicated lives, and was pivotal