Executive President:

Edward Darling

Edward Darling was born in Cork in 1933. He was a chorister at St. Nicholas Parish Church in Cork city where his father was Rector. He was ordained in 1956. In 1972 he was appointed Rector of St. John's Malone, Belfast, where he remained until his election as Bishop of Limerick and Killaloe in 1981. He was the general Editor of both Irish Church Praise and Church Hymnal (5th Edition). He is the co-author of the recently-published Companion to Church Hymnal. He retired from active ministry in July 2000.

Executive Vice-President:

Alan Luff

Alan Luff born Bristol 1928: read classics and theology at Oxford; ordained Manchester 1956. Precentor Manchester Cathedral 1962-69; Vicar Penmaenmawr 1969-79; Precentor Westminster Abbey 1979-92; Canon of Birmingham 1992-94. Interest in hymns deepened by membership of Dunblane Consultation; lectured on Welsh Hymns to Hymn Society leading to writing of book Welsh Hymns and their Tunes (1990). Has served HS as Secretary, Chairman, Vice Executive President. Has been the contact between HS and the International Fellowship for Hymnology. Editor of centenary volume for English Hymnal.

Secretary:

Robert A. Canham

Revd Robert Canham was born and grew up in Chelmsford, Essex where he worked in the family Builders' Merchants and became Managing Director. He was ordained as a minister of the United Reformed Church in 1985 and has served in pastoral ministry in Chelmsford, Brentwood and Ingatestone and currently Lancaster. Robert married Jenny in 1970 and they have two sons. Robert joined The Hymn Society in 1994. In 2000 Robert became a member of the Executive Committee and in 2002 he served as Chaplain to the Leicester Conference. In 2003 he was elected Honorary Secretary of the Society. Apart from hymns, Robert's passions include butterflies and their conservation, his two black labrador dogs, listening to music and roaming the Lake District fells. Robert is Chair of the Friends of Westminster and Cheshunt Theological Colleges, Cambridge, Chair of Lancashire Churches Together and also a Trustee of The Pratt Green Trust.

Treasurer:

Michael Garland

Michael Garland was born in Birmingham in 1950. His interest in hymns began when he joined the Church Choir at the age of eight. Ordained in 1973, Michael served two curacies in Swansea and Sutton Coldfield before becoming Vicar of Kingshurst, Birmingham in 1979. From 1988 until 2003 he was Rector of Curdworth and Minworth before a move to the Diocese of Gloucester where he is now Vicar of St Mary's Charlton Kings on the eastern edge of Cheltenham. Michael joined the Hymn Society in 1977 and has served as Secretary and Treasurer. He is a keen singer and is a loyal supporter of West Bromwich Albion whose club anthem is 'The Lord's my shepherd!'

Editor:

Dr Andrew Pratt

The Rev Dr Andrew Pratt is a British Methodist Minister and Hymn Writer. Born in Paignton, Devon, he studied Zoology at university, took a Masters in Marine Biology and then taught for seven years in secondary schools. He trained for the Methodist Ministry at Queens College, Birmingham serving in various Circuits in the North West of England. He researched the hymns of Frederick Faber for a MA and then completed a PhD on the Methodist Hymn Book (1933). His book, ‘O for a thousand tongues’ based on this research was published by the Methodist Publishing House in the United Kingdom in December 2004. He has written over 400 hymns and has had three published collections, Blinded by the Dazzle, Whatever Name or Creed and Reclaiming Praise (all by Stainer & Bell Ltd). He is a Tutor in Contextual Theology at Hartley Victoria College, part of the Luther King Foundation for Theological Education in Manchester, England, training people for Ministry. He broadcasts regularly on BBC Radio Merseyside.

Web co-ordinator

Gillian Warson

Gillian Warson is a writer, teacher and viola player. She has a particular interest in hymnody and local history and has published four books on hymn singing in North Oxfordshire. She has given papers at conferences in Romania and Canada as well as all over the UK and Ireland. She has written a biography of the hymn writer Fred Kaan which is published by Stainer and Bell. Gillian is married with two teenaged children.

John Barnard is active in church music as composer, arranger, choir director and organist in Harrow, England. He has contributed to several Jubilate publications including 'Hymns for Today's Church, 'Carols for Today', 'Psalms for Today', and most recently, 'Sing Glory'. He is probably best known for his hymn tune 'Guiting Power' which is widely sung in the UK. His musical activities are a hobby, as he earns his living teaching German at the John Lyon School in North-west London.

John Crothers

John was born in Belfast 1948; studied at Queen's, Belfast (BA, DipEd, DASE), NUU, Coleraine (MA), and the Sorbonne (DLF); grammar school languages teacher 1973-2001; Chairman, French Circle of Northern Ireland; Vice-President, Modern Language Association of NI; decorated Chevalier des Palmes Académiques for services to French culture (1994); interest in hymns dates from piano lessons, age 7; successively Director of Music/Organist in various churches - Presbyterian, Methodist and St Martin's Church of Ireland, Belfast; Chairman, RSCM in Ireland (1993-2001); founder-director, RSCM Ireland Singers; conductor, Hymn Society's 'Act of Praise', Dublin 2000; lives in SW Paris (since 2001); active as university English teacher; occasional organist/choral director/singer; latterly, writes poetry, church music, hymn tunes (2 published, anthem on 2 CDs).

James lives in Chesterfield with his wife Patricia. He is a non-practising Anglican priest who worships at St John's Church Newbold and served his title there from 1970 to1973. He has a strong interest in the history of hymnody and has a fine collection of Cof E Hymnals, including the Clumber Hymnal, Gladstone's Hymnary, the Yattendon and every edition of A&M and the EH including the elusive 'abridged'! James had a lecture on the 'Centenary of the English Hymnal' published last year published in 2007. He is a new member of the Hymn Society and attended his firstConference at Moulton College in 2007. He was honoured and surprised to be elected onto the Executive.

Marjorie Dobson, born in the mining area of County Durham in 1940 and became a Methodist Local Preacher at the age of 20. Involvement in youth work created a concern to make worship relevant to the generation that first took on the name of 'teenager'. Although always a 'scribbler', her first serious attempt at writing began with her involvement in the Christian input to local radio in Bradford and she began to produce a wide range of meditations, poems, character pieces and one or two hymns that could be classed as 'early work.' She began to write hymns more purposefully in the late 1980s and to be published in the 1990s, when Stainer & Bell produced the Worship Live periodical. Since then her work has appeared in a wide range of worship anthologies and hymns have been included in New Start Hymns and Songs, Songs for the New Millennium and Sound Bytes. Her first collection was published in 2004, by Stainer & Bell, under the title of Multi-coloured Maze. Marjorie was also co-author, with Andrew Pratt, of Poppies and Snowdrops, a book of resources for grief and bereavement, published by Inspire in 2006.

David Lee (b. 1956) was brought up in south Manchester, studied Geology with Geophysics at Durham University, Computing Science at Newcastle, and has worked since then in the I.T. Service systems group at Durham.

He sketched his first hymn-tune while at primary school and has been active in church music since his early teens. During summer months in 1975 and 1976, he was Abbey Musician at Iona Abbey, which provided a much widened outlook from his earlier largely conservative-evangelical background. He was a founder of the music team at St. Nicholas, Durham under its then vicar, George Carey, and was organist at the local hospital chaplaincy.

He is deeply worried by the loss of regular use of psalms from evangelical and charismatic worship, and so has written many settings, accessible to music-groups, to attempt to restore this.

As a member of the Durham Diocesan Liturgical Committee music subgroup he fostered a short course to give "small church" musicians a basic confidence-building grounding in music for orship.

His tunes have appeared in a diverse range of publications, from Spring Harvest songbook and Methodist Wesley Music for the Millennium collection, through to the RSCM Carol Book and the Lutheran Service Book.

Martin Leckebusch was born in Leicester in 1962 and educated at Oriel College, Oxford (MA, Mathematics) and Brunel University (MSc, Numerical Analysis). Since graduating he has worked in IT. He and his wife, Jane, have four daughters; their second child, a son, died in 1995. The family live in Gloucester and belong to a Baptist church. Apart from hymnody, Martin’s interests include jazz, crosswords and good curry.

Since 1987 he has written nearly 400 hymn texts, of which around half have so far been published by Kevin Mayhew: see More than Words (2000), Songs of God's People Vol 1 (2001) and Vol 2 (2002). Many of his texts can also be found on Hymnquest.

Martin is keen to see the church equipped for Christian living, and believes that well-crafted and wisely-used contemporary hymns and songs have a vital role to play in that process.

Kay Griffiths was born in Upminster, Essex, in 1943. After education at Christ's Hospital and Durham University, she went into the housing service, and worked first in Newcastle and then in Gateshead. She became a member of the Institute of Housing in 1970. After taking early retirement in 1995 from the local authority, she spent 7 years in university administration. She married Tony, a classics teacher, in 1980. Kay was brought up in the Congregational church but was confirmed into the Church of England while at university. A choir singer since her teens (church music, mostly), she sings in the choir at St. George's, Jesmond, Newcastle, and in Cappella Novocastriensis, a Newcastle-based early-music chamber choir. She became a Fellow of the Guild of Musicians and Singers in 2005. Her interest in hymns, fostered in the nonconformist tradition, dates from childhood. Since joining the Hymn Society in 1985 she has attended every conference and has occasionally reviewed for the Bulletin. She served on the Executive Committee in the 1990s and from 2001-2007.

Gordon Taylor was born in Liverpool in 1946, the son of Salvation Army officers.  He grew up in Woodford and has lived in Croydon since 1972.  After 20 years working for the Greater London Council on planning, housing and social policy, he wrote a historical and biographical 'Companion to the Song Book of The Salvation Army' and has worked at the Salvation Army's International Heritage Centre since 1988, as Senior Researcher, Archivist, and now Historian & Associate Director for Historical Services.  He has been a member of the Hymn Society since 1973 and was Treasurer, 1991-93.  His interests embrace all aspects of hymnody, congregational singing and choral music, especially revival hymns, the hymns of Charles Wesley and Isaac Watts, the interplay between poetry and music, and why editors alter hymns.  He plays the piano for fun and relaxation, and enjoys travel and walking with his wife, Hazel.  Favourite places include the New Forest, the North York Moors and the Yorkshire Dales, Norway, Western Canada, Switzerland and New Zealand.

Geoffrey Wrayford

Geoffrey Wrayford is a Devonian, educated at Shebbear College (associated with the birthplace of the Bible Christian movement) and Exeter College, Oxford. During forty years in the parochial ministry of the Church of England he held appointments at Cirencester Parish Church amd Chelmsford Cathedral, followed by incumbencies at Canvey Island, Frome (Somerset) and Minehead. His interest in hymnody was ignited by meeting many of those responsible for the 'hymn explosion' at the Society's Cheltenham Conference in 1968. Essentially a 'user', he has contributed occasional reviews to the Bulletin, and was Secretary of the Society for six years. His hope is that the Society should be both a prism for research, and a forum for those concerned with the future of hymnody.