Terry Neville, head of legal for the John Lewis Partnership (JLP), spends much of his spare time as a Conservative councillor for the London Borough of Enfield.

Indeed, before he joined the retailer in 1985, Neville was a city solicitor for the Conservative Council of Westminster. It was not, however, disenchantment with local politics that prompted the move to JLP but rather, according to Neville, a “quirk of fate”.