About us | iret

We are Mick and Lynn Oakey, and we live in a small village in West Sussex. We have been visiting Egypt since 1985, when we fell in love with the country on a cruise down the River Nile all the way from Aswan to Cairo.

We have both been long-serving committee members of Sussex Egyptology Society (www.egyptology-uk.com), one of the UK’s biggest regional Egyptological groups. Mick is a founder-member and Vice-Chairman, and Lynn was both Treasurer and Membership Secretary until other commitments took over in early 2013. In addition, Mick is a member of the Egypt Exploration Society (www.ees.ac.uk).

Mick was Editor of the renowned international historic-aviation magazine Aeroplane — published by IPC Media, part of Time Warner — until October 2010, when he took redundancy, subsequently spending a year as the magazine’s Consultant Editor. He is a member of the Royal Aeronautical Society’s Historical Group Committee (www.raes.org.uk), and in June 2011 he received The Air League’s prestigious Scott-Farnie Medal from HRH The Duke of Edinburgh “for most meritorious work in the field of air education”. In October 2012 he and former Aeroplane colleague Nick Stroud launched a new independent quarterly journal, The Aviation Historian (www.theaviationhistorian.com); Mick splits his time between being Managing Editor of the new venture and continuing with his Egyptian stonecarvings etc — an unusual and rewarding combination.

Lynn’s career was in the financial services sector, mainly doing management reporting and accounts analysis, until she took redundancy at the end of 2009. Since then she has taken on contract work in the same field, and is now Finance Manager of The Aviation Historian (see above).

Having both had full-time, high-pressure office jobs for nearly 30 years — with Mick doing mainly words and Lynn doing mainly numbers — we leapt at the chance to work together on ventures which had been bubbling in the backs of our minds for a long time. We already knew we had a passion for making things, after a lifetime of modelmaking, furniture-making and craft work in whatever spare time we could find.

• If you would like more information, or to discuss ideas for tailor-made stonecarvings or jewellery, please don’t hesitate to contact Mick & Lynn via e-mail at iret@btinternet.com or telephone and leave a message on 07854 840004.