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Joyce Alexander (née Garven) was born in 1935 to Scottish medical missionary parents in Manchuria, northern China, which at the time was under Japanese occupation. After the outbreak of the second world war the family was evacuated to Vancouver, finally arriving back in Glasgow in 1944. Joyce’s father returned to China from 1946 to 1948 to help rebuild Mukden Medical College. After being forced out by the Communist takeover he became a reader in pathology at the University of Glasgow.