A GLOBETROTTING Morris Motors engineer and a legal executive who once helped represent Liberace celebrate their Diamond anniversary today.

Ronald and Janet Richards of Appleton will be raising a glass to their colourful 60 years of marriage with an afternoon tea at Faringdon's fancy Sudbury House Hotel.

They have also been celebrating since Sunday with their three children and their partners, their six grandchildren and great-granddaughter.

Asked the secret to their long and happy marriage, Mrs Richards, 81, said: "I'm very tolerant," to which her husband replied he had always felt the same about himself.

Mr Richards was born into a Welsh-speaking household in Cardiff three years before the outbreak of the Second World War and said one of his earliest memories was of a Messerschmitt fighter plane flying over his street firing on the houses.

He spent his childhood living with various aunts and uncles, including an aunt who lived in Lonsdale Road in Summertown.

Mrs Richards, who was also born in 1936, grew up in Leamington then moved to Oxford with her parents in the early 50s.

When the pair were both 19 in 1955, they were dragged by friends to a dance at St Michael and All Angels Church on Lonsdale Road.

What they expected to be a dull evening was suddenly brightened up when their eyes met.

Asked whether it was love at first sight, Mr Richards said: "Absolutely, there was an attraction straight away.

"We had more than a couple of dances that night."

The young lovers immediately started dating in Oxford and before long decided to get married.

Just two years later, on September 7, 1957, they tied the knot at another St Michael and All Angels Church in Old Marston.

The same year, Mr Richards was drafted to do his National Service so the pair moved to London for the next two years while he worked at the War Office.

Mrs Richards, meanwhile, worked as a secretary at one of the capital's top law firms which represented the likes of Liberace and Diana Dors in libel cases.

After London they moved back to Old Marston and had three children: Timothy in 1959, Kathryn in 1961 and Sian in 1964.

Mr Richards then got an engineering job with Nuffield Exports, the exporting arm of Morris Motors.

The work took him across the globe, to Africa and the Middle East, and he eventually spent the best part of a year living in Angola.

After that stint he took a new job with Volkswagen and moved to Germany for another 12 months, adding German to his Portuguese, Welsh and English.

Mrs Richards, meanwhile, became a legal executive for the Post Office and then BT.

The couple moved to their current home in Appleton in 1971 and Mr Richards swapped his jetsetting lifestyle for running a management consultancy.