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An Epsom couple are celebrating 65 years of marriage after meeting by chance at a country dance.

Trevor and Phyllis Brooks, both 88, of Tattenham Crescent, Epsom, met in a Leicestershire village where Phyllis was carnival queen.

They have lived in the Epsom area for the past 42 years and marked their wedding anniversary on Wednesday, September 11, with a romantic break at their favourite hotel in Suffolk.

Both have lived interesting lives. Mr Brooks was involved in the D-Day landings as part of the combined ops base at Warsash in the Hamble river, preparing ships to be sent to the landing zones in France. He later served in the Royal Navy in Malta aboard the HMS Rosemary in 1947.

After he left the services he became an accountant in 1953, and went on to help run a major engineering firm Bullough as its finance director, based in Epsom.

During the Second World War, Mrs Brooks was evacuated to Leicestershire from Ipswich. She is an artist, once working for Wills & Hepworth, the company behind the printing of the children’s Ladybird books.

The couple’s home is full of her pieces. She also takes great pride in her cooking, with lemon meringue her speciality.

The couple have three sons and two grandchildren and the family is spread all over the country. But they met up earlier this month for a family get together in London and visited the Shard together.

Looking back over their life together, Mrs Brooks said: "we were very much in love".

Mr Brooks said the secret of a happy marriage is "to give and take and see each other’s point of view".

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