The family aren’t too far away, the local Methodist church is close, and it’s a nice walk to Pizza Express. Home is down a quiet lane, tucked away from the city roar. Dragonflies dance on the pond full of ornamental fish in this semi-rural idyll. If you tire of gardening, potter in the shed that houses a model railway. TAUGHT ...
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Pat Billsborrow was just eight when she heard the divine voice say, ‘I want you’. She was standing in Durham Cathedral, by the black line where medieval women could not cross. No one else was there. Growing up, she failed her O Levels. ‘That’s alright,’ her dad told her, ‘you can get married.’ But an education official believed in her, ...
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Dr Who returns to the nation’s TV screens this spring. But the housing society already has its own ‘time lord’ in Revd Neville Pugh. However, Peter Capaldi needn’t worry. Nev’s powers are strictly making grandfather clocks. Stepping through the side door of his garage in North Wales is like entering the Tardis. But the doctor’s time machine is replaced by knotted wood, ...
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For the cost of a cup of coffee, bucketfuls of hope have been poured out for hundreds of children in Kenya – thanks to Joy Murphy’s family. But the road to Africa has been a rocky one for them. GOLDEN MILE Joy lives in a Housing Society property at Aylesbury. It’s a big, beautiful bungalow with a generous, landscaped garden ...
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The media world was his parish. Society tenant Eric Blennerhassett was ordained as a Methodist minister – but swapped pulpit for production studios. TV and radio became his ‘district’ for more than 20 years. BETTER WORLD Born in 1921, Eric was brought up in a Methodist home at Erdington, Birmingham. Imaginative teachers showed Eric the power of storytelling. ‘To see a ...
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Born and bred amid the coal and iron fields of wartime Derbyshire, young Kathleen Fountain played darts at the miner’s welfare. In the future she’d face much more challenging targets amid the clipped lawns and carpeted corridors of Westminster. Kathleen came from the village of Calow. When she later became a peer of the realm, she took her title from ...
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