The St James family

Born in London and brought up, educated and married in Kent, Mike moved to Leamington Spa in 1970 when his work as a Farm Management Adviser was transferred to Warwick. His career changed direction in the 1970s when his employer became involved in agricultural development projects overseas: he and Lesley lived in Tanzania, Northern Malaysia, Egypt, Thailand and Brunei, where their daughter was born. From 1986 he worked as a freelance agricultural economist for the International Fund for Agricultural Development, a UN agency based in Rome, designing and supervising rural development projects, with Lesley handling all his administration. He was lucky to visit over forty countries, working in places as diverse as North Korea, Mongolia and Bhutan: 'boredom was never a problem.' He and Lesley tried St James in 2011 and found the welcome so amazing that they stayed. A keen gardener, cyclist and cricketer, he is a founder member of the Cricket Memorabilia Society. He retired at the end of 2014, was inveigled onto the PCC that same year, and one thing led to another. He and Lesley now have eight grandchildren.

Jane has lived in Warwickshire all of her life, apart from her years at Durham University and subsequently in London where she met her husband Gus. After five years working for the BBC at Broadcasting House they moved to Leamington in 1977 and she worked for Radio 4 producing documentaries and features, based at Pebble Mill. A career break to look after their two children freed her to set up her own production company producing readings for BBC World Service, Radio 2 and Radio 4, most regularly for the Book of the Week and Book at Bedtime slots.

Away from work she spent 18 years as a governor of the Warwick Schools Foundation, 15 of those as the Chairman at King's High. She is currently a trustee of the Charity of Thomas Oken and Nicholas Eyffler.

Being part of the St James family brings with a richness and fellowship that is hard to describe. There is a fair amount of work involved in being a churchwarden, not to mention the flower team that pitches in to create wonderful displays for weddings, Christmas and Easter, or the cleaning rota, or the churchyard clearing mornings, but the teamwork at St James is such that everything you tackle you do amongst friends, accompanied by a good deal of laughter, cups of coffee, often cake, and unfailing support. It is a church family filled with the people who have become the most dear to me. What a joy.