On the work front, as well as coaching, writing and speaking, I invigilate exams both for a local comprehensive school and for a firm doing legal training. (Being paid to stare at people is the best possible job for a writer.)

Apart from my family, my main interest away from work is sport of one sort or another: playing, watching on TV, or going to matches. I’ve been a Norwich City fan since my teens and watch them when I can; I also love going to see England play cricket. I play table-tennis regularly in the Oxford and District Table-Tennis League, and captained my team to the Division Two championship in the 2007-2008 season (mostly by dropping myself!)I'm in an Oxfordshire veterans side in the lower reaches of the county championships.


Vikings B Division 2 Champions 2007-08
l-r Bill Mason, Roel Dullens, Anne & Paul Borrowdale
also featuring Eamonn Deeley (not pictured)


I cycle regularly, and am a member of the Institue of Advanced Motorists.

I read quite a lot, though I find it much harder to get into fiction since starting to write it myself. I tend to go for crime novels. Elizabeth George is my favourite current author, and I'm working my way through Sue Grafton's series A is for Alibi. For lighter stories, I enjoy Sheila O'Flanagan. I also like re-reading stories I know well, like Lord of the Rings, anything by Dorothy Sayers, Patricia Wentworth, PG Wodehouse, or - confession time - my complete collection of the Saint books by Leslie Charteris.

I often have a few non-fiction books on the go - recent titles include
Non-Violent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg
The Compassionate Mind by Paul Gilbert
Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku
Systems Thinking in the Public Sector by John Seddon.
OK, they sound dull but all very readable and thought-provoking.
 
I watch a fair amount of TV apart from sport: documentaries on history, science or ideas (specially anything fronted by geologist Iain Stewart!); quiz shows; comedies, such as The Simpsons, Peep Show, The Mighty Boosh, Father Ted, Coupling, Black Books. I love Canadian comedy series Corner Gas, except it's not on tv over here, and also another Canadian series Slings and Arrows, which has been shown on Sky Arts. If I go to the theatre, it tends to be for comedy. I've recently seen The Thirty-Nine Steps, Dara O'Briain, Ross Noble, and Tim Minchin.

At various times, I've done amateur dramatics, including writing sketches and monologues for performance. I wrote a full-length pantomime for the Iffley Parish Performers in 1995 - Snow-Green and the Seventeen and a Half Dwarves, with a cast of tens and a talking mirror, and was in other performances with them.


Born Anne Beacock, Towcester, Northants    
Schools Dell Road County Primary, Oulton Broad, Suffolk; Sir John Leman High School, Beccles, Suffolk
University Van Mildert College, Durham: BA Hons Theology (1976); MA Theology (1977); St John's College, Durham: PhD Theology (1988)

As an undergraduate, I captained the women's university table-tennis team and struck up a partnership with the men's captain, who I married in 1977. That took me to Redhill, and a job with Crusader Insurance Company in Reigate: 'Come and work here,' said my manager, 'we need another table-tennis player.' Those were the days.

In 1979, I went back north to become an industrial chaplain on Teesside. Friday, a lowly insurance company clerk, Monday, being introduced to a personnel officer with the words, 'this is Anne, she's come to talk to you about women and work.' I think it's called a learning curve. During my five years there, I was licensed as a Church of England Reader, and had my daughter on Christmas Day, 1983. I'd been due to preach at the midnight service, but fortunately they let me off!

In 1984, I got a full-time University Studentship to study for a PhD in Theology at Durham. By 1988, I had my doctorate for my thesis on women, work and theology, and a son, born in 1987. Much of that research is written up in my book A Woman's Work

In 1988, I became Social Responsibility Officer for the Diocese of Oxford, then after six years, decided to go freelance. I'd already been lecturing in ethics on the Oxford Ministry Course, and became a part-time associate tutor when it changed into the St Albans and Oxford Ministry Course in 1994. I was regularly writing as a theologian and was on several national church working parties including the group which produced the 1995 Church of England report on the family, Something to Celebrate.

That led to lots of invitations to do talks and workshops: from various Church of England dioceses, theological colleges, and organisations from the Mothers Union to the Christian Socialist Movement, Greenbelt to the Industrial Mission Association. I also did some occasional broadcasting, eg Radio 4’s Sunday programme.

By 2001/2, I was ready to move on from the St Albans and Oxford Ministry Course, and trained as a personal coach. What with leaving my academic role and spending so much time writing my non-best-seller fiction, the invitations began to dry up. Though that was no bad thing, because 2004 - 2007 was dominated by the illness and death of both my parents. I'm now busy again, though, writing, speaking on the Oxfordshire Women's Institute circuit, coaching and work consultancy, and invigilating.