PAUL HANDLEY, the editor of the Church Times since 1995, has announced that he is to retire at the end of September. Mr Handley, who will be 66 later this month, started working for the Church Times in 1988 as a reporter, and went on to be news editor.

After a stint running the press office at Lambeth Palace in the early 1990s, he worked as a freelance journalist while his wife trained for the priesthood. During this time, he wrote the Church Times’s weekly press column.

Mr Handley said this week: “I have an undiminished love of the Church of England, an undiminished sympathy for its leadership, an undiminished respect for my colleagues, and maybe slightly diminished energy levels.”

The chief executive of Hymns Ancient & Modern, Dominic Vaughan, said: “I would like to thank Paul and the team for all the years of hard work, never missing a deadline and working together to develop many new innovations such as digital formats, podcasts, and events. We will all miss Paul, both as Church Times’s editor and as part of the senior management team at Hymns Ancient & Modern.”

A job advert can be found here