I first met Mary Cherry on moving with our young family into the north Oxfordshire village of Hook Norton in the early 1970s. Despite the extent of her national and international commitments with the UN Food Programme and Oxfam, Mary managed to remain well known in the village, and at the heart of the Anglican parish community. Her home was a place of welcome for church-based study groups, and she attended the Norman church of St Peter or one of the three other local medieval churches. Mary occasionally led family worship, and spoke to local congregations about her work, and the different communities across the world it brought her into contact with. Rooted in the village, she was a constantly positive presence, utterly unpretentious and down-to-earth about the scope of her activity, which was evidently inspired by the deeply charitable and practical impulses of her Christian faith.
