A CELEBRITY lecture by leading educationalist Dame Janet Trotter will help launch centenary celebrations at Thornbury's St Paul's Church.

Dame Janet, vice-chancellor and principal of the University of Gloucestershire, will be at the church in Hacket Lane next Sunday, January 23, to talk on the theme of Christian Education.

The timing is highly appropriate because the date not only marks the church's Patronal Festival but is also Education Sunday.

Dame Janet has served on the Higher Education Funding Council for England and on the Teacher Training Agency and is a Senior Inspector of Theological Colleges and Courses for the Church of England. She has been chairman of the South West Region Health Authority and has also chaired, since its inception, Winston's Wish, the local child bereavement charity which is now acknowledged internationally as a centre of excellence.

She was awarded an OBE in 1991 and made a Dame in 2001 for her services in education and health.

Thornbury vicar the Rev David Primrose, said her talk, entitled By the Renewing of Your Mind, would be an opportunity to hear a speaker of distinction.

"Dame Janet can speak with authority, having worked in education all her life and leading the Gloucestershire colleges through to their current university status," he said.

The celebrity lecture will take place at 6pm and there will be wine and cheese to follow and music from the Castle School Wind Quintet.

Tickets are available from the church office (01454 281900) and Thornbury Vicarage (01454 413209).

All proceeds will go towards St Paul's centenary celebrations which continue until the beginning of October.