Lesley-Ann Jones was appointed churchwarden in 2021. Fascinated by newspapers from an early age thanks to her late sportswriter father Ken Jones, ‘The Voice of Sport’, she studied Modern Languages but was waylaid by the irresistible allure of the Fleet Street village.
She joined the staff of the Daily Mail as a reporter, and first set foot inside ‘The Journalists’ Church’ in 1987, seeking baptism for her firstborn. All three of her children have since been baptised and confirmed here. She was elected to the Guild of St Bride originally in 2000, and joined the Guild Court in 2019. Even though the newspaper industry has withdrawn from Fleet Street, she regards it as vital that the media maintains close links with its spiritual home.
Having written for most of our national daily and Sunday newspapers during the 1980s and ’90s, she became a full-time author in 1997 with the first of her four biographies of Queen frontman Freddie Mercury. She has since written and published more than twenty books, including co-writes, ghost-writes, and studies of Marc Bolan, David Bowie and John Lennon. She is published in thirty languages on six continents, contributes to radio and television programmes around the world, and remains actively involved in the UK music business. She supports all genres of live and recorded music and spends as much time as possible at gigs.