Malcolm Lyell

Lyell’s clients included kings and princes, maharajas, presidents and prime ministers from a dozen different countries. Hollywood film stars, hunters, sportsmen and trophy collectors from around the world came to visit the company’s premises in Bruton Street, Mayfair, and found themselves invited for dinner that evening at his home in west London .

Malcolm Lyell

Malcolm Charles Alastair Lyell was born on January 9 1922, the son of Angus Lyell, MC, a partner in the private banking house Child & Co. Malcolm’s great-great-uncle was Sir Charles Lyell, the Victorian geologist and mentor of Charles Darwin, and as a boy he showed an early interest in natural history and archaeology, creating his own museum at the family home in South Kensington (“admission 1d”) and breeding butterflies in the conservatory. He was educated at Bryanston and then at Westminster.

Commissioned into the Royal Welch Fusiliers in 1940, he was invalided out the next year owing to his lifelong propensity to sleepwalk. Disappointed by this development, he retreated to Devon and joined the Local Defence Volunteers, patrolling Dartmoor on horseback and looking out for enemy parachutists. In 1943 he embarked on a degree in Forestry at Bangor University, and after graduating worked in the Lake District.

In 1947, aged 25, Lyell was hired as manager of the London showrooms of the gunsmiths Westley Richards, in Conduit Street, where the other staff were in their 70s. Knowing nothing of gun-making, he was sent on a three-month course to the firm’s Birmingham factory.

In the 1950s the future of the London gun trade seemed uncertain. Lyell realised that he could best develop the business by buying and reselling second-hand guns and double rifles, particularly from India. He also stocked the shop with what were then novel sidelines: books, sporting and wildlife pictures, and clothing.

Assisted by his wife Rosamunde (née Wilmer), whom he married in 1949, he showed a natural flair for salesmanship. When, in 1955, the parent company sought to close the London operation and sell the lease, he was able to persuade a number of British and American sportsmen to finance its acquisition, setting himself up in business as Westley Richards (Agency) Ltd, and buying Jeffery’s, the gun-makers, and later Farlows, the fishing tackle specialists.
In 1959 he was invited by the then chairman of Holland & Holland to merge his company with theirs. He became managing director and moved the company to new premises in Bruton Street. He visited many European gun makers to bring the Harrow Road factory up to date; set up an apprentice scheme; and imported skilled Spanish craftsmen. He also developed the loss-making shooting school at Northwood as a venue for corporate entertainment.
In 1952 Lyell had been introduced to Prince Ali Reza, brother of the Shah of Iran, which led two years later to a request to show some rifles to the Shah himself. An invitation followed to visit the head of the Arabshaibani tribe, who took Lyell shooting in his tribal area, and then in the Shah’s preserves east of Tehran in search of ibex. In 1957 Lyell and his wife went to Afghanistan to hunt markhor as guests of Prince Abdul Azim Mahmoud Ghazi .
Another customer of Holland & Holland was Prince Asserate Kassa of Ethiopia, who invited the Lyells to shoot ibex in the Simien mountains and later in the Red Sea Hills .
Lyell had begun to trade with India in the 1950s, acquiring princely armouries such as that of the Nizam of Hyderabad and going on shikar (hunting trips) in the royal game reserves of Indore and Bikaner, and in the Terai.
Rosamunde Lyell’s mother had been a friend of BJ Gould, the political officer for Bhutan, Sikkim and Tibet, and through this connection the Lyells got to know the Chogyal of Sikkim and were guardians to his daughter when she was at school in England.
King Jigme Dorji Wangchuck, the 3rd King of Bhutan, had first met Lyell in 1949 when, as Crown Prince, he came to the Westley Richards showrooms to buy hunting rifles. Lyell and his wife were invited by the king to Bhutan in the early 1970s, when it was largely inaccessible to foreigners — the only way in was by a gruelling road trip from India.
Using hand-drawn maps prepared by the botanist Frank Ludlow in 1949, Lyell and his family made the first of four expeditions into the then largely unknown northern mountains to get a glimpse of bharal (the Himalayan blue sheep, which they found at 15,000ft) and blue bear, which has been suggested as the animal behind yeti sightings. They also saw wild yak and snow leopard.
In 1974 Lyell was invited to the coronation of the 4th King, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, which he and his eldest daughter attended in full Bhutanese dress. Bhutan was Lyell’s favourite country, and his London house became an unofficial consulate for Bhutanese students and scholars visiting England .
Soaring inflation in the 1970s meant that Holland & Holland was not making a profit on handmade guns that had to be ordered and priced as much as two years before delivery.
Lyell had conceived the idea of presentation guns that, while being fully functioning weapons, would increase in value as works of art and were priced accordingly. Inspired by the gun makers of the 18th century, he came up with the Rococo gun, with deep engraving in gold and silver of classical motifs such as Diana the Huntress.
The Rococo gun had been described in The Shooting Times in 1966 as the finest gun of modern times, and from then he produced a series entitled “Products of Excellence”. These included such guns as the Set of Five, beautifully matched shotguns in every gauge from 12 bore to .410; the African Hunters series of big game rifles; and finally the Saurian Four Bore, decorated with scenes of prehistoric life.
Many of Holland & Holland’s clients were Americans, who loved the clubbable atmosphere of the gunroom in Bruton Street, and who would stray into Lyell’s office to be given tea and biscuits and exchange tales of hunting adventures; often they became personal friends and invited the Lyells to shoot quail or dove on their estates or ranches. In turn, a visitor to Lyell’s house might find himself having dinner with Jimmy Stewart or Stewart Granger.
From these American friends Lyell acquired a love of the loud check jackets and colourful Hawaiian shirts which became his trademark . Not everyone, however, received the benefit of Lyell’s hospitality. He claimed to have ejected the Soviet ambassador — who had come in to buy guns for Leonid Brezhnev — from the shop in August 1968, telling him that he could return only when the Soviets had left Czechoslovakia.
Lyell was appointed deputy chairman of Holland & Holland in 1985 and retired in 1988; the company was sold shortly afterwards to Chanel.
In retirement he and his wife lived in Wiltshire, where he created a beautiful garden out of a paddock. He had not shot for many years before he died .
Malcolm Lyell is survived by his wife and their two daughters

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/8293942/Malcolm-Lyell.html