“My mother and I were in Plymouth all through the Blitz and twice she saved our house when it was firebombed,” she recalls. “We were in the shelter at the bottom of the garden and saw all these flames coming out of the roof. So my mother picked up the big metal bucket of sand and took it up the stairs and up a ladder to the loft and put the fire out. She was a very brave lady.”

Joan’s father was in the Royal Navy Submarine Service and so Joan and her mother lived with constant worry. “Many submarines were being lost. We never knew if he would return home.”

When he did come back to base, it was usually to Scotland. “Dad couldn’t reveal his whereabouts and so he and Mum agreed on a code and he would send her a telegram. She would immediately pack up and go to the secret destination. These times together were precious as they never knew if they would be the last.

Joan had to get used to life as a young mother in a country where she didn’t speak the language. “My Turkish friends in Malta had kindly written a list of words to help me with the shopping and I went armed with this every time until I knew enough to get by.”

Further postings for Peter followed in the Far East and then South Africa while Joan and the children remained in the UK. Peter was then posted to Scotland where they lived as a family.

Peter left the Navy at 39 to take up bookkeeping while studying to become a chartered secretary and the family moved to Luton. After the children left home, Joan and Peter moved to High Wycombe, joining a church at Tylers Green. It was here that a seed was planted that would lead them into a new area of ministry.

“We attended a talk at the Methodist church by an ex-prisoner. I felt God was calling me to work with prisoners but I didn’t know how.”

This led them on adventures. “On one occasion, there was a young man newly released, who had to get a bus from Exeter to Bournemouth to report to probation, only the bus didn’t turn up. We ended up driving him all the way so that he could make it in time, and he made it – just.”

As far as Joan knows, none of the ex-prisoners ever went back in. She has kept up with some of them over the years and as we speak the phone rings and it is one such gentleman calling to say ‘hello’.

Joan and Peter encouraged those they helped to find a church. “Sadly some churches weren’t very welcoming so we’d tell them not to give up but to try a different one.”

After Peter died, Joan moved to Homesdale in London in 2018 to be closer to family.