With sincere thanks to her son Anthony for sharing this beautiful obituary below. Old Scholars may remember Joan for her time at Sidcot, where she won the Southall Diving Shield, was Captain of the 1st XI hockey, and won the Merttens Essay Prize.

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My mother, Joan Warlow, who died suddenly at the age of 97 in August this year, was one of those people who form the backbone of society without taking or seeking high office, honour or recognition. She was the centre of a large and vibrant family but also took an interest in and contributed to the wider community around her. Having made her home in Guernsey and loving the island, she will be known to many here and remembered with fondness.

She was born Joan Astrid Oakley in Folkestone on 14 December 1927 to Edward Charles and Gladys Mildred. Being born in Kent was something of happenstance, however - it was where the family landed in England, not wanting their child to be born in Germany, where Edward was working as a senior accountant. It meant that the first four years of her life were spent in Berlin, with idyllic summers spent with family beside the sea in Hampshire.

Her father’s work took him to Sweden, where his wife and daughter would join him for weeks at a time, then back to the UK, where Joan’s brother Patrick was born, in 1935. They moved again, to Paris, and Joan, having started her schooling in England, was sent to board at a girls’ school in Switzerland. But within two years they were on the move again, as the storm clouds of war gathered over Europe. A family holiday in Brittany left them well placed to escape back to the UK and a return to uniform for her father, who had fought with distinction in the Great War.
 

For Joan it meant another change of education - to the Quaker school Sidcot, in Somerset. Her choice, because it was co-educational, a rarity among private schools in those days. Despite the privations and disruption of wartime, she was left with happy memories of her time there and she forged many lifelong friendships.
 

The war was over by the time Joan left school and she went to London to train as a secretary. She got a job in the typing pool at the Foreign Office and was quickly moved to work for the minister of state, Hector McNeil. She always claimed that she only got the job because she was the one person who understood his Scottish accent.
 

McNeil’s press secretary at the time was one Guy Burgess, later unmasked as a spy for the Soviets. “We were told not to let him look into our files,” Joan would say later - so someone knew he was a wrong un. Working at the FO meant travel to the US and then a posting to occupied Vienna. While there she went to a dance at a hospital in the British sector. There she met a young army doctor called Captain Allan Warlow. They danced, they got on well. They saw each other again and got on well.

So well, in fact, that within weeks they were engaged.

Allan was Welsh and Joan’s father’s wry response on learning this was “well, as long as his surname isn’t Jones”. The whirlwind romance began in 1949 and by 2 December the following year they were married, after a fairytale wedding in St Martin-in-the-Fields in Trafalgar Square. From there Joan was launched into life as a doctor’s wife in the South Wales valleys. He worked long and difficult hours as a GP in Mountain Ash; she manned the phone, looked after the home and created a circle of friends. Their five sons - Nicholas, born in 1952, Peter in 1954, Robin in 1957, Anthony in 1960 and Charles in 1966 - were born in Wales and began their schooling there.

Among the many activities Joan threw herself into, she was something of a proto-environmentalist, campaigning against the presence of a particularly noxious coke-making plant in the Cynon valley.

Joan’s settled life in Wales was tragically disturbed when she lost her parents and her brother within a four-year period. She and Allan were looking for a new direction and a new challenge and the chance of a job in Guernsey presented itself at just the right time. In 1973 they moved to the island, Allan joining the New Street practice in Town and buying a home at L’Ancresse. Settling in to their new surroundings was made all the easier by Joan’s open nature and ease at making new acquaintance, with fellow doctor John Toynton and his wife Anthea, near neighbours, chief among those who helped them settle and became dear friends.

Allan was a keen golfer and Joan played a bit too. They became stalwarts of the Guernsey Pétanque Club, she sang with the Glee singers and was a volunteer for different causes, helping at a nursery in Town and working in the WRVS - now the Guernsey Volunteer Service. She helped deliver Meals on Wheels and would transport people with restricted mobility to and from appointments, calling them “my old people”, though they were frequently younger than her.
 

Allan retired in 1991 and they began travelling the world - and downsized from the L’Ancresse property to a new build at Port Soif. There they would remain, Joan’s adored husband dying in 2015 after she had cared for him devotedly through a long and trying period of ill health. Joan remained vigorous and active almost to the end of her days. One of her bitterest regrets was being taken off the roads at the age of 97.

Whisper it, but the rest of the island may have breathed a sigh of relief.

She was scathing about the decision and didn’t care who heard it. One of the many things that endeared her to people was her complete lack of filter. If she didn’t like your new haircut she’d let you know. Loudly. That candour was the other side of a curiosity and openness that made her delight in people, discovering their stories and leaving them smiling. But family was the driving force of Joan’s life. She watched her boys grow up, gain partners, have their own children, who in turn had their own children. She ended up with 14 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren. She wouldn’t necessarily remember all their names the older she got, but she loved them all, equally and completely. And they all adored her.

She lives on in the hearts of Nicholas, his partner Carol, Peter, Robin and his wife Zoe, Anthony and partner Vern and Charles and his wife Danielle; in their children and grandchildren; and the many, many people on the island whose lives have been touched by this ordinary, extraordinary woman.