A young wife who claimed her husband regularly beat her, stabbed him through the throat with an eight-inch blade kitchen knife and severed his vocal cords, a jury heard yesterday.

Norman Lapsley, aged 55, told Stafford Crown Court that he was on the phone to a daughter from a previous marriage when his wife came in and said: "Right, I am going to finish you off."

He told jurors: "Then she disappeared and came back holding a knife."

He continued: "I picked up an ornamental elephant to keep her away from me. I was picking up my baby daughter and as I picked her up I saw the knife coming towards me. It cut my arm as I protected myself then I felt it go into my throat."

Susan Lapsley (27) of Princess Road, Balsall Heath, Birmingham, and formerly of Matlock Drive, Chadsmoor, Cannock, pleaded not guilty to wounding Mr Lapsley with intent to cause him grievous bodily harm.

Mr Lapsley said he met his wife in 1996 in Kenya where he lived and worked. They married in 2002 and had two daughters now aged eight and nearly two.

He said they had "bad times and good" when they lived in Kenya but things changed when they came to England and the marriage started to break down. She started to drink excessively, he said.

He said on the day he was stabbed in August last year they were in a "good mood and there was no reason for the day to end like it did."

Nick Tatlow, prosecuting, said that Mrs Lapsley stabbed her husband in the neck and was not acting in self defence. He said while Mr and Mrs Lapsley were at a barbecue a "neighbour claimed she heard the wife scream she was going to hurt her husband and stab him." He said Mrs Lapsley told the police: "He's been beating me for years."

The trial continues.