HECTOR CORYN MARK DAVIE (1941-) was born on 20 November 1941 at Mount Alvernia Maternity Home, Harvey Road, Guildford, Surrey, and spent the first four years of his life in his grandmother's house, "The Hut", next to the Common in Cranleigh, Surrey.

In 1946, his mother and he moved to Salisbury, and he attended "Uplands", a small preparatory school, for three years. The four-guinea termly fee eventually proved too much, and he later went to the local primary school, St Mark's Junior Mixed. He attended Bishop Wordsworth's School, Salisbury, from 1952 to 1960. His teachers here included F.C. Happold, the slightly eccentric headmaster, and William ("Scruff") Golding, whose novel The Lord of the Flies had just been accepted for publication.

He went up to St Peter's College, Oxford, in 1960 to read Modern Languages. After the first year examinations, however, he elected to read Jurisprudence, "for intellectual stimulation." He graduated with second class honours in 1963. In the same year, he was accepted for ordination training, and remained at Oxford to complete a postgraduate Diploma in Theology, prior to attending Cuddesdon Theological College.

He did Voluntary Service Overseas, teaching French in Kafue, Zambia at a Methodist Mission School. He decided not to proceed immediately with ordination (though on the recommendation of Robert Runcie, then Principal at Cuddesdon, he reconsidered it carefully ten years later!), and subsequently trained as a teacher of English as a Second Language at the University College of North Wales in Bangor.

In September 1967 he took a job teaching English in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he met Joanna Marion Kate Pettman, the daughter of Ernest Edward Arthur Pettman and Doris Frances Marion Pettman, née Baker. Joanna had been born at Cuffley, Hertfordshire, on 4 April 1940. They married at Tunbridge Wells, Kent, on 31 July 1968.

They worked in Ethiopia until 1970, and subsequently spent a year teaching in Walsall, Staffordshire. They lived at 197 Lichfield Road, Four Oaks, Sutton Coldfield, and their eldest daughter was born while they were living there. In 1971, Hector took a post as lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. Joanna also became a lecturer there, and the family remained there for six years, until 1977. They left Arabia and moved to High Sprintgill, Fell End, Ravenstonedale, Westmorland, where for a time they operated a café and craft shop at Dent, Yorkshire.

Hector returned to teaching, working at the University of Buckingham between 1980 and 1982 in the field of English for Academic Purposes. After a further short period in Arabia, he joined Ascom Hasler Ltd., a Swiss telecommunications company, in October 1986, where his first task was to prepare a course for training future software programmers. The family moved to Plattenweg 34, 3098 Schliern-bei-Köniz, Switzerland.

A growing interest in computing, resulting partly from a mathematical and legal education, partly from specialization in the fields of computer-assisted learning, and of phonetics and voice-recognition, led him further into the field of software development. He became training manager in Ascom Hasler's telex software department, and was a member of the programming team at the time Ascom finally disengaged itself from the telex switching business in 1997. He also worked in the development of network management systems. Subsequently he was system engineer in charge of the Unix network for Ascom's Telecom Solutions Division. Structural changes at Ascom made this post superfluous, and he took early retirement at the end of December 2002.

He was also active in the local Anglican church, St Ursula's, serving as churchwarden from 1990 to 1992 and as treasurer from 1992 to 1998 and again from 2001.

Hector and Joanna Davie have three children:

1 ANTONIA JUSTINE MARION DAVIE (b.1971), born at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Edgbaston, Birmingham on 24 June 1971. She spent the first six years of her life in Saudi Arabia, and then moved with her parents to Cumbria, where she attended school in Sedbergh, and later at Queen Ethelburga's School in Harrogate. After her parents moved to Switzerland in 1986, she completed her education in England and Switzerland.

She attended a Further Education College in Hastings, Sussex, specializing in bilingual secretarial studies. Then in 1993, she worked for Hewlett Packard and Ascom Autelca, both near Berne in Switzerland, saving up for a trip around the world.

She enjoyed travelling, and subsequently spent a year in Australia on a working visa. There she met Owen Robert Frost. She married him at Laidley, Queensland on 25 June 1999.

2 TAMSIN MIRANDA DAVIE (b.1973), born at Kendal, Westmorland, on 7 July 1973. She spent the first four years of her life in Saudi Arabia, and then moved to Cumbria, attending school in Sedbergh. She accompanied her parents to Switzerland in 1986, completing her education in Köniz. After graduating from the Gymnasium, she studied Remedial Therapy at the University of Fribourg. She works as a therapist at Rossfeld in Berne.

While at Gymnasium, she was in the same class as Erik Lars Jenk, whom she married at Berne on 4 August 2000 (the church wedding was on the 19th).

They have two children:

3 SEBASTIAN JONATHAN DAVIE (b.1976), born at Kendal on 15 July 1976. He spent the first year of his life in Riyadh, and returned to England in 1977, attending school in Sedbergh until the age of ten, when the family moved to Switzerland. He continued his education in Köniz and Berne, attending secondary school in Muristalden. After passing his Secondary School Certificate examinations, he entered the field of computing, and joined with a group of friends in setting up a company, Netlevel AG, specializing in software, hardware and networking solutions. In 2005, he took on a post in Geneva at the PepsiCo Europe headquarters.