Obituaries May 2023 to April 2025
Where a name is highlighted in red, click on that link to read the obituary:
| Name | Date |
| Major Sir Andrew Forbes Bt | 8 March 2023 (late entry) |
| Mrs A H (Alison) Hall (Widow of Lt K MaCrae Hall (RC 46-47) | Not known (after 6 May 2023) |
| T/Capt M E (Matt) Moore (RC, 5th & 1st Bns 1945-47) | 07 July 2023 |
| Mrs Audrey Willis (wife of Maj Michael Willis (1st Bn 1955 – 57)) | 06 September 2023 |
| Lt Col Hugh Rose (2nd Bn Comdt 1974 – 1976) | 08 October 2023 |
| Maj (David) D R M Shaw (1st & 2nd Bn 1966 – 1984) | 19 October 2023 |
| Mrs Jill Smith (late wife of Brig E D ‘Birdie’ Smith CBE DSO (1st Bn 1965-68) | December 2023 |
| Mrs Jane Smith (wife of Brig Mike Smith (Comdt 1/2GR 1975 – 1978) | 01 January 2024 |
| Professor Sir Roy Calne (2nd Bn RMO 1955-56) | 06 January 2024 |
| Mrs Mary Meadows (Widow of the late Maj PHM (Val) Meadows (3rd Bn 1943-46)) | 13 January 2024 |
| Maj J E G (John) Lamond MBE (1st Bn 1951 – 1985) | 21 January 2024 |
| Lt Col R T (Ron) Bevan MBE (2GR 1987 – 1993 (1st Bn QM 1987 – 1989)) | 11 February 2024 |
| Mrs Pat Jones (widow of Col M P F Jones CBE DSO OStJ (9GR 37-47, 1st & 2nd Bns 47-73) | 17 March 2024 |
| Captain M M McSporran MBE (4th Bn 1945-48) | 10 April 2024 |
| Major Richard ‘ Rick ‘ Dunn late RAPC | 3 July 2024 |
| Captain Hamish Galbraith MA | 10 May 2021 (late entry) |
| Lieutenant Brian Bland | 16 September 2021 (late entry) |
| Lieutenant Colonel J O Lawes LVO MC | 30 September 2024 |
| Right Honourable Sir John Nott KCB PC MA | 6 November 2024 |
| Gurkha Officers: | |
| Captain Nar Sing Gurung (1st Bn 1945 – 2023) | 1 July 2023 |
| Major Lyangsong Tamsang (Lepcha) (2nd Bn & SGO 28AEC) | 14 November 2023 |
| Captain Siribahadur Thapa (2nd Bn, Head Clerk) | 18 November 2023 |
| Lieutenant Ramparsad Gurung (1st Bn, Nepal Cup) | November 2023 |
| Honorary Lieutenant Jiwanbahadur Rana MVO (2nd Bn Gurkha Major) | 23 October 2024 |
Andrew Forbes who died on 8th March 2023 aged 77 was a popular seconded officer from The Gordon Highlanders who in January 1973 joined the 1st Battalion in Cassino Lines in Hong Kong. He had been an Associate Member of the Sirmoor Club since he served with the Regiment .
Sir Andrew Iain Ochoncar Forbes of Corse Bt was born on 28th November 1945. He came from a distinguished line of Gordon Highlander forebears. His grandfather Lt Col James Ochonca Forbes DL commanded the 3rd (Militia) Battalion Gordon Highlanders and his father Lt Col Patrick Forbes OBE DL also commanded the regiment for an operational tour in Cyprus during the EOKA campaign.
He was educated at Trinity College ,Glenalmond and RMA Sandhurst and was gazetted in December 1965 to a Regular Commission in The Gordon Highlanders. After completing the Platoon Commanders Course at Hythe he went up to Oxford to read Russian and French at St Catherine’s College. In 1969 he joined his Regiment and served in BAOR, completed a UN Tour in Cyprus and in 1972 an operational tour in Armagh, Northern Ireland .
In January 1973 Andrew was seconded to the 1st Battalion 2nd Goorkhas and from April 1973 was Regimental Signals Officer. He accompanied the battalion on its move to Brunei in January 1974 and from October 1974 until his departure in February 1975 he was OC A Company. On completion of his secondment Andrew was appointed Adjutant of the Gordon Highlanders in Fort George and in 1976 deployed for his second Northern Ireland operational tour to Palace Barracks, Belfast. His final appointment before leaving the Army in April 1978 was as OC HQ Company The Scottish Infantry Depot Glencorse, near Penicuik.
Andrew then completed a MBA at Cranfield School of Management and became a director of an Investment Relations Consultancy firm in Edinburgh. In July 1984 he married Miss Jane Dunbar-Nasmith who tragically predeceased him in September 2005.
Throughout his life Andrew maintained a love of piping and he was a member of The Royal Scottish Piping Society for many years. He was a perfectionist who insisted upon the highest of standards both during his military career and in civilian life. In 2000 he inherited the Baronetcy of Forbes of Craigievar in the County of Aberdeen and of Corse, which had been established in 1630, from his third cousin Sir John Alexander Cumnock Forbes of Craigievar, the 12th Baronet.
Sir Andrew’s funeral took place at St Thomas’s Episcopal Church, Aboyne. He is survived by his daughters Anna and Isobel and sons James (who has inherited the baronetcy) and David. His cousin Lord Sempill commented that ‘the eulogy painted a picture of an old fashioned gentleman, an eloquent communicator and wonderful father.’
JRH
Click here to return to the top of the page
Jungle Warfare Instructor at both Johor Bahru and Tutong
David Shaw died on 19 October 2023 in the Philippines. He was born on 4 January 1944 and educated at Bradfield College and Gloucester Technical College. He attended Mons Officer Cadet School , and was gazetted to a Short Service Commission in the 2nd Goorkhas and on 25 January 1966 he joined the 2nd Battalion in Slim Barracks , Singapore . He served with the Battalion on its last operational tour in Borneo as a Company Officer with C Company based in Katibas 3rd Division , and is remembered for having a baby macaque monkey which became something of a menace .He later became Assistant Adjutant , Intelligence Officer and moved with the Battalion to Brunei where he became MTO . In February 1971 until June 1972 he commanded D Company which found the Guards for both the Queen’s Birthday Parade and Sultan’s Birthday Parade in 1971 before the Battalion moved to Hong Kong .
As part of the exchange system between battalions , in December 1972 ,David was transferred to the 1st Battalion in Cassino Camp , Hong Kong to command B Company until December 1973 . During this time he took B Company to Australia for five weeks on Exercise Reindeer .In February 1974 David was appointed Tactics Instructor at the Jungle Warfare School in Johor Bahru until August 1975 when he moved to Brunei as Assistant Chief Instructor of the Training Team based at Tutong ,and from November 1975 he became Chief Instructor until May 1976 .
In September 1976 he returned to the 1st Battalion in Burma Lines , Hong Kong and took over B Company again as well as acting as Battalion Amalgamation Officer until December 1978 .During which time he took B Company to Fiji on Exercise Coconut Grove . In January 1979 to December 1980 he commanded the Recruit Company at the Training Depot Brigade of Gurkhas in Hong Kong.In March 1980 on the occasion of the Visit of the Colonel in Chief to the Regiment in Hong Kong , David was responsible for the Jungle Warfare stand where he persuaded HRH Prince Charles to taste curried snake ! From Hong Kong , David returned to Brunei where he was initially appointed as Chief Instructor and later as Commander of the Training Team Brunei at Tutong from January 1981 until October 1983 .After which in February 1984 he took early retirement and went to live in the Philippines where he worked as a freelance security consultant which he described in an article published in The Sirmooree in 1999 as ‘ the training of private armies ..which might involve meetings with either a bowl of noodles or a bottle of Dom Perignon ‘. For a couple of years he also ran a small hotel in Manila .
David married Miss Carolyn Girling in October 1969 and they had two sons Nicholas and Rupert . The marriage was dissolved in 1982 .
JRH
Click here to return to the top of the page
Commandant 2nd Battalion May 1974 – September 1976
Hugh Rose had a distinguished military pedigree ; his grandfather was Colonel Hugh Rose ( who served in the 2nd Goorkhas in 1881 and later with 3GR ) , and two of his uncles who served in 3GR and 4GR respectively .Going further back , the extended Rose family had been in India for more than five generations . He was born on 24 December 1933 , son of Aster Rose Esq and educated at Eastbourne College .He enlisted in The Royal Sussex Regiment and was sent to Eaton Hall Officer Cadet School and then to RMA Sandhurst from where he was gazetted to the 7th Gurkha Rifles .He joined their 2nd Battalion in September 1955 and despite only being a Lieutenant commanded A Company on operations during the Malayan Emergency . He was briefly a temporary ADC to Field Marshal Sir Gerald Templer .
Hugh later served at the Training Depot Brigade of Gurkhas , Sungei Patani and in 1961 was appointed Staff Captain HQ 99 Gurkha Infantry Brigade , Johor Bahru . He rejoined the 2nd Battalion in 1963 as OC D Company which he commanded on operations in Borneo . He then qualified for Staff College from where he was appointed DAA & QMG ( Ops ) HQ 1st Division in BAOR and in 1969 he returned to 2/7GR in Hong Kong and served as a rifle company commander in the amalgamated 7th Duke of Edinburgh’s Own Gurkha Rifles,
In 1971 he was a company commander at RMA Sandhurst and in 1973 was appointed Commandant of the Training Centre Brigade of Gurkhas , Hong Kong .
On 21 May 1974 Hugh transferred to the 2nd Goorkhas to command the 2nd Battalion for what was to be the first occasion that the Regiment had ever served in the United Kingdom . The commitments for any UK based Gurkha battalion in those days were relentless and included Public Duties , Bisley , firefighting etc as well as provision of demonstration troops at RMAS and Brecon . The Battalion was dispersed , but the 2nd Battalion was fortunate to have carried out battalion group exercises in the vast training area of Alberta , Canada over successive summers . In August 1976 as part of an adventurous training exercise Hugh accompanied by Geoff Ashley as the Bn 2IC and the Gurkha Major – Maj( QGO ) Jiwanbahadur Rana MVO , were taken to a remote lake in the Rockies by courtesy of a Canadian Army helicopter to fish for cutthroat trout where the party was disturbed by bears . By all accounts the total catch was most impressive , although the Commandant’s sleeping bag was removed by a bear !
It cannot have been easy for Hugh coming from the khalo paltan to accept that the Sirmoor Club would naturally wish to welcome the 2nd Battalion to the United Kingdom .It was on his watch that in November 1975 HM The Queen inspected the Queen’s Truncheon at Buckingham Palace which was followed by lunch at St James’s Palace Officers’ Mess ; and later in September 1976 he oversaw the arrangements for a ceremonial parade and Sounding of Retreat at Church Crookham of the handover of Colonel of the Regiment from Brigadier Pat Kent to General Sir ‘Dwin Bramall .
And yet Hugh Rose recorded in the Digest of Service ‘ His great sadness at leaving the battalion which had welcomed him , an ‘ outsider ‘ ,and done so much for him ‘.
After his tenure as Commandant 2nd Battalion in September 1976 , he was appointed AAG Brigade of Gurkhas until January 1979 when he became GSO1 Ops /Plans ( Overseas ) at HQ UK Land Forces until April 1981 .He was then Chief Instructor Small Arms Wing , School of Infantry ,Hythe and his final appointment was Commandant Devon & Cornwall Training Areas . He retired in December 1988 .
Hugh married Miss Shirley Weber in 1959 and they had a son Bruce and a daughter Julie . Hugh and Shirley later divorced and in September 1988 he married Miss Sue Young who survives him. William Shuttlewood, Richard Venning and Charles Ward represented the Sirmoor Club at the cremation.
JRH
The following obituary written by Keith Robinson was published in the 7th Gurkha Rifles Journal:
Click here to return to the top of the page
Major Lyangsong Lepcha, a clerk in the 2nd Battalion and latterly Gurkha Major of 28 Army Education Centre in Hong Kong, passed away on 14th November 2023. He was very highly regarded by many British Officers whose Gurkhali skills he nurtured on the language qualification course. He also did a great deal, as hereditary chief of the Lepcha clan, to promote minority interests, on one occasion going to Delhi to brief Sonja Gandhi on the issues. Our condolences go to his family.
Obituary from the Telegraph of India:
Lepcha leader Lyangsong Tamsang passes away at 80 in Kalimpong
Vivek Chhetri Darjeeling Published 15.11.23, 05:44 AM
Lyangsong Tamsang, the chairman of Mayel Lyang Lepcha Development Board and a tall leader of the Lepcha community, died at Kalimpong on Tuesday afternoon. He was 80.
Family sources said that the leader suffered a cardiac arrest and died on his way to the hospital from his Bongbusty residence in Kalimpong at around 5.30pm.
Lyangsong Tamsang, the chairman of Mayel Lyang Lepcha Development Board and a tall leader of the Lepcha community, died at Kalimpong on Tuesday afternoon. He was 80.
Family sources said that the leader suffered a cardiac arrest and died on his way to the hospital from his Bongbusty residence in Kalimpong at around 5.30pm.
Chief minister Mamata Banerjee posted a message on X: “I am deeply saddened by the demise of Lyangsong Tamsang, Chairman of the Lepcha Board in our hills.”
Tamsang had also served in the British Army. After his stint with the British army, Tamsang took up the cause of the Lepcha community.
As president of the Indigenous Lepcha Tribal Association, Tamsang revived memories of Lepcha king Pano Gaeboo Achyok by celebrating his birth anniversary at Damsang fort in Kalimpong.
Tamsang also spearheaded the movement for a development board for the community.
Mamata, who shared cordial relations with Tamsang, granted the community a development board — the first of its kind for the Lepcha community — in 2012 and appointed Tamsang as the chairman.
“His death is a great loss to me, the Lepcha people of the hills, and for all our communities. He was very close to me and gave me their highest honour as well as translated my books in their language. A good man and a great public worker and leader, he leaves me in mourning,” wrote Mamata in X.
Click here to return to the top of the page
Lieutenant Colonel Ron Bevan MBE
Lieutenant Colonel Ronald Thomas Bevan MBE died on Sunday 11 February 2024 aged 85 . Ron Bevan was born on 5 January 1939 and educated at Lord Scudamore School , Hereford . In September 1958 he enlisted into The King’s Shropshire Light Infantry /3rd Bn Light Infantry and in December 1974 he was
promoted WO1 , Regimental Sergeant Major of 2LI based at Lemgo , West Germany . In April 1978 he was gazetted to a Short Service Commission in The Light Infantry and served as Intelligence Officer 1LI based in Northern Ireland and in March 1979 he was Mentioned in Despatches . He later served as
Quartermaster 3LI in South Armagh when he was awarded a GOC Northern Ireland Commendation .
In January 1986 he was seconded as Quartermaster to 2nd Bn 7th Duke of Edinburgh’s Own Gurkha Rifles until February 1987 when was seconded again as Quartermaster to 1st Bn 2nd Goorkhas in Cassino Lines , Hong Kong until August 1990 . Meanwhile he had in September 1987 transferred to the 2nd Goorkhas . In the Queen’s Birthday Honours June 1988 he was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire for his services with 1/2GR in Hong Kong.
In September 1990 Ron Bevan was posted as CO of the British Army Training Support Unit , Wainwright , Canada until October 1992 when he became Camp Commandant HQ 143 ( West Midlands ) Brigade – his final appointment before retirement in April 1993 . After retiring from the Regular Army , he remained as Camp Commandant , HQ Wales and Western District , Shrewsbury as a Retired
Officer Grade 2 until March 2004. From April 2008 he worked as The Light Infantry Reunion Coordinator at Shrewsbury. In 2010 he was a member of the Light Infantry Committee.
JRH
Click here to return to the top of the page
Major John Evan Grant Lamond, MBE
John Lamond, who died in Queen Alexandra Hospital Portsmouth on 21st January 2024, was a stalwart member of the 2nd Goorkhas all his active life.
He was born in Rangoon on 16th April 1930, son of John Lamond who worked in the Burma Forestry Department. He was educated at Portsmouth Grammar School and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.
John was the first British Officer (along with Ian Christie) to be gazetted direct to the Regiment after the Second World War and he joined the 1st Battalion on operations in Malaya in October 1951. Throughout the campaign he served in several regimental jobs, but he specialised on the Vickers Medium Machine Gun and on and off for some years he commanded the MMG Platoon in Support Company.
He had a clever brain and, having learned to speak Russian, he was employed in listening stations in Germany and Cyprus. He commanded HQ Company in Brunei and Singapore before being finally appointed to command the British Gurkha Record Office in Hong Kong from 1979. For his excellent work there, John was appointed MBE when he retired in 1985.
From April 1985 to 1995 John was Curator of the Gurkha Museum, first at Church Crookham and later at Winchester. He was a lifelong member of The Sirmoor Club.
John’s wife Sylvia, whom he married in 1953, died in 2006. He is survived by his sons Johnny (who also served in the Regiment) and Stephen and his daughters Annie and Katy to whom we send our deep sympathy.
The following eulogy for John Lamond was delivered at his funeral on 21 February 2024 by his son, also John Lamond:
DRW
Click here to return to the top of the page
Mary Meadows, who died in Norwich and Norfolk Hospital on 13th January 2024, was the widow of Major Val Meadows CBE MC who served with the 3rd Battalion 2nd Goorkhas in Burma in 1945.
Mary married Val straight from school and went with him to Singapore. Val had joined the Malayan Civil Service after the War and became an Advisor to Lee Kwan Yew, the Prime Minister of Singapore. Mary became friends with Lee and they corresponded for the rest of Lee’s life.
In Singapore Mary became a business woman in her own right. She imported rolls of Thai Silk cloth and became an expert in Jade, early Chinese porcelain and Thai Sewankhalok ceramics.
When Val retired to Norfolk they both continued in business for some years until Val died in 1997.
Not many Sirmoorees will remember Mary, although she attended The Sirmoor Club lunches, but those who do so will remember her with great affection.
Mary was an only child and she and Val had no children. We send our condolences to her nephew and niece by marriage Mr and Mrs Cary and Ronni Meadows.
DRW
Click here to return to the top of the page
Professor Sir Roy Calne was Regimental Medical Officer of the 2nd Battalion from August 1955 until a date in 1956, thought to be March that year when the Battalion moved from Hong Kong to Malaya.
In the 1960s Roy Calne, professor of surgery at Cambridge University, was gripped by the emerging new science of transplantation to help those with kidney and liver failure.
Calne, who has died aged 93, became Britain’s premier transplant surgeon and researcher, achieving a number of firsts, including the first liver transplant in Europe in 1968, the world’s first liver, heart and lung transplant in 1986 (with John Wallwork) and the world’s first successful “organ cluster” transplant (stomach, intestine, pancreas, liver and kidney) in 1994.
The game changer and his greatest achievement was his use of drugs, including cyclosporine, to suppress the immune system and prevent organ rejection. By 1977 cyclosporine had increased the chance of surviving a year after a kidney transplant to around 80%, paving the way for transplant medicine to become mainstream and a huge expansion in the number of transplant units worldwide.
Sir Roy Calne with a self-portrait that he produced in 1999. Photograph: Cambridge University Hospitals/PA Wire
Calne’s interest in transplants began in 1950 when, as a medical student, he was shocked to hear that a young patient on his ward who was the same age as himself would be dead in two weeks from kidney failure. He asked why they could not save the patient’s life with a new kidney. He had never seen a transplant operation, but he thought technically it would not be difficult to detach the kidney from his connecting vein, ureter and artery, and graft in a new one. His consultant batted the suggestion away as impossibly naive. With so little known about the immune system, donor organs were nearly always rejected.
In 1957, while studying for the fellowship exam at the Royal College of Surgeons, Calne took a job at Oxford University as an anatomy demonstrator. There he heard the biologist Peter Medawar talking about cutting-edge research on immunological tolerance.
Medawar had injected newborn mice with cells from a different mouse. The immune systems of the host mice were still developing and would tolerate the cells from the donor, so that if you later gave them a skin graft from the donor mouse, it would be accepted. Afterwards Calne asked if there was any practical application for transplant patients and Medawar replied: “Absolutely none.”
Undeterred, Calne, who in 1958 was a surgeon at the Royal Free hospital in London, was determined that it should be possible to transplant organs and used his spare time to experiment with kidney transplants in animals. Initially he used irradiation to prevent their immune system rejecting the donor organ, but it was too toxic, so he tried the drug 6-mercaptopurine, with limited success.
He kept in touch with Medawar, who helped him get a Harkness fellowship in 1960 at the Peter Bent Brigham hospital in Boston to study with Francis Moore and Joseph Murray, the leading transplant surgeons of the day. In 1954 Murray had successfully carried out the world’s first human kidney transplant – the donor and recipient were identical twins, which overcame the organ rejection problem.
While in the US, Calne continued to experiment with animals (a collie called Lollipop lived for six months following a kidney graft) and also met the scientists George Hitchings and Gertrude Elion from the Burroughs Wellcome laboratory, who had created the immunosuppressant drug azathioprine, which when used with steroid drugs gave good results. When Calne returned to London, he took a job at St Mary’s hospital, where 20 patients had died following unsuccessful kidney transplants. They had been given X-rays to induce immune suppression, but at Calne’s insistence future patients were treated with azathioprine.
In 1965 Calne became both professor of surgery at Cambridge and a consultant at Addenbrooke’s hospital, where he stayed for 33 years. He embarked on a renal transplant programme and set up a tissue typing laboratory and blood bank, operating on his first kidney transplant patient in 1966.
When a woman with a malignant growth on her liver was referred to Addenbrooke’s in 1968, he decided to offer her a transplant. His hospital colleagues opposed the operation as too risky, but Moore, his former mentor from the US, happened to be in Cambridge and supported him, assisting him at what was the first liver transplant in Europe.
Encouraged by this, Calne formed a partnership with the hepatologist Roger Williams from King’s College hospital in London, in which he performed the surgery and Williams took care of the patients. Initially they and the recipient of the liver would have to travel to the hospital where the donor had died, which could be anywhere in the country, and there was only a small window of opportunity while the liver was viable. The situation improved greatly in the 1970s with techniques to keep the liver in good condition and with more blood banks and specialist nursing staff.
But the biggest improvement came with the use of cyclosporine. Employees at the Swiss chemical company Sandoz were encouraged to collect soil samples when they travelled that could be analysed for new organisms that might have a medicinal use. A fungus found in this way gave rise to the immunosuppressant cyclosporine.
In 1977 Calne heard about it and offered to trial it in animal experiments. His team found they got particularly good results if it was dissolved in olive oil, and went on to trial it in humans. It boosted the chances of surviving for a year after a kidney transplant from 50% to 80%. The team also pioneered the use of other immunosuppressant drugs including rapamycin, 5K506 and Campath 1H.
Calne’s transplant programme grew and by the 90s his team were carrying out more than 100 liver and 80 kidney transplants each year. They were even treating children, including Ben Hardwick, who, aged three, was Britain’s youngest liver transplant patient in 1984.
As operations became more complex, Calne was cooperating with other units. In December 1986, in a joint operation with Wallwork and other colleagues at Papworth hospital, Cambridge, he gave a liver graft to a woman who was also having a heart and lungs transplant.
Calne was born in Richmond, Surrey, the elder of two sons. His father, Joseph, who had been a car engineer with Rover, owned a garage and encouraged his son to take engines apart. His mother, Eileen (nee Gubbay), was determined that Roy and her younger son, Donald, should have the chance denied to her to go to university and Roy said “she was a severe tutor to my younger brother and myself”. Donald later became a leading neurologist in Canada.
Roy was educated at Dulwich prep school based in south London, which was evacuated to north Wales during the second world war, and Lancing college, West Sussex, again evacuated to Ludlow, Shropshire. At Lancing, he enjoyed nature and life sciences, and kept a flock of 40 pigeons in the attic of the school chapel.
From the age of 12 Calne, who said he was “fascinated by the human engine”, knew he wanted to be a surgeon. When he was 16 he was accepted to study medicine at Guy’s hospital in London, where his fellow medical students – demobbed soldiers from the second world war – were nearly a decade older than himself.
After qualifying, Calne joined the Royal Army Medical Corps in 1953 to do his national service with the Gurkhas. His girlfriend Patsy (Patricia) Whelan, a nurse at Guy’s, had also managed to get stationed in the far east with the Queen Alexandra’s Royal Nursing Corps and the couple married in 1956 in Hong Kong. They would go on to have four daughters and two sons.
From childhood, Calne had always enjoyed painting. In 1988 he operated on the distinguished Scottish painter John Bellany, who following his liver transplant made 60 portraits of himself in hospital. He gave Calne lessons and they painted each other. Painting grew into an immensely therapeutic hobby for Calne, who painted many of his transplant patients, finding it brought a different, more humane quality to the relationship, particularly with his child patients. In 1991 he had an exhibition, The Gift of Life, at the Barbican in London.
Calne was elected FRS in 1974, knighted for services to transplant medicine in 1986 and in 2014 won the Pride of Britain lifetime achievement award. He continued to be outspoken on subjects such as transplant ethics, NHS management and the world’s growing population (writing a book, Too Many People, on the subject that was published in 1994).
Following his retirement from the NHS, he became professor of surgery in Singapore. He kept in close contact with other transplant doctors and surgeons across the world, notably the US transplant surgeon Thomas Starzl, and in 2012 Starzl and Calne shared the Lasker DeBakey prize (sometimes known as the “pre-Nobel”) for liver transplantation.
Calne is survived by Patsy, their children and his brother, Donald.
Roy Yorke Calne, surgeon, born 30 December 1930; died 6 January 2024
(This obituary appeared in The Guardian)
Click here to return to the top of the page
Captain Mathias Edward Moore
BSc, C.Eng., M.I.E.E., M.inst B.E., M.A.S.E.E.
Matt Moore who was born in Manchester on 16th September 1923, was probably the oldest surviving officer of the Regiment when he died in a nursing home at Lee-on-The Solent on 7th July 2023 at the age of 99. He served in the 2nd Goorkhas from 28th October 1945 to December 1947.
Matt Moore was conscripted into The Queen’s Royal West Surrey Regiment in which he became a Lance Corporal before being sent to India as a Cadet to the Indian Military Academy, Dehra Dun He expected to be commissioned into the REME. But to his astonishment he was gazetted to the 2nd Goorkhas because, he was told, the Infantry needed Officers. From the Regimental Centre in Dehra Dun he was posted to the 5th Battalion stationed at Razmak, in Waziristan. After the 5th Battalion was disbanded he joined the 1st Battalion in Santa Cruz, some 17 miles north of Bombay, where he held the dual appointments of Administrative Company Commander and MTO. I served there with him but lost contact after he left the Army.
Matt had started studying engineering at an early age after leaving Xaverian College. He completed his education at Manchester College of Science and Technology and Manchester University. He followed that with a long and highly distinguished world-wide career in electrical engineering.
Matt left us his Curriculum Vitae and a very lengthy diary detailing his eminent career in important, prestigious undertakings in major electrical constructions in countries throughout the world. It is on that diary that this obituary is based.
Matt Moore was unmarried.
DRW
Click here to return to the top of the page
Colonial Officer who was the last surviving British Officer of the 4th Battalion
Captain Malcolm McSporran who died on 10 April 2024 at the age of 97 ,was at the time of his death not only the oldest member of the Sirmoor Club , but the last surviving British Officer from the 4th Battalion before it was handed over to the Indian Army on 5th December 1947, and subsequently
became 5th Battalion 8th Gorkha Rifles of the Indian Army.
Malcolm McSporran was born on 27 September 1926 , son of Angus McSporran Esq of Glasgow , a marine engineer with Pacific Steam Navigation Company . Malcolm was educated at Calday Grange Grammar School, Wirral and Trinity Hall, Cambridge. In September 1969 he married Miss Eileen
Shanley whom he met in Sarawak and they had one son.
Before joining the Army , and despite still being at school he served in the 17th Battalion Cheshire Home Guard. In July 1944 he enlisted as an Indian Army Cadet in The Queen’s Royal Regiment (West Surrey) and after completing basic training at Maidstone he was sent to the Officers’ Training School, Mhow. McSporran was granted an Emergency Commission in the Indian Army and was appointed to the 2nd Goorkhas. In late August 1945 he joined the Regimental Centre. From there he was posted in November 1945 to the 4th Battalion where he served as a Company Officer in French Indo-China. In December 1945 McSporran was attached to a rifle company of the 9th Battalion 14th Punjab Regiment lining the banks of the River Cho in Indo-China and the subsequent follow-up in support of 4th Battalion’s action against the Anamites on the peninsula known as Hanh Phu Island. He went with the Punjabis to Bau in Sarawak where he took every opportunity to visit the local Land Dayak longhouses. This was to be the beginning of his lifelong interest in Sarawak and its people. He later rejoined the 4th Battalion in North Borneo as a Company Commander.
In June 1946 he sailed with the Battalion to India via Singapore from where he went to the UK on leave. He was initially prevented from returning to India and instead employed as a platoon commander instructor for Indian Army Cadets in the Holding Company at the Guards Depot, Caterham. He eventually reached India in November 1946 where he rejoined the 4th Battalion at Dinapore as a Company Commander. In February 1947 he was appointed Adjutant until the evening of 5th December 1947 , when together with Major Harry Butchard (who was acting as Commandant) they were the last two officers to leave before the 4th Battalion was handed over to the Indian Army.
After being demobilised in 1948 Malcolm McSporran attended the Colonial Service’s Devonshire Course at Trinity Hall, Cambridge and in January 1950 he was appointed to Sarawak as a Cadet, at first stationed at Simanggang. His subsequent appointments were numerous and included District Officer (DO) Lubok Antu, DO Saratok, Assistant Resident Brunei (where he became a founder member of the Royal Brunei Yacht Club); DO Binatang; DO Kapit; Private Secretary to HE The Governor of Sarawak; DO Lundu; DO Baram; DO Limbang; DO Lawas; Resident 5th Division, and finally Advisor to the
locally promoted Resident 2nd Division at Simanggang.
Malcolm McSporran when DO Baram, introducing the Duke of Edinburgh to members of the local community.
Malcolm McSporran attended the Coronation of HM The Queen in June 1953 as ADC to HH The Sultan of Brunei , Sir Omar Ali Saifuddin. In January 1964 he was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire in recognition of his significant contribution to the lives of the upriver peoples of Sarawak. McSporran worked closely with the British Commonwealth Forces during Confrontation with Indonesia, and was Resident of the 5th Division at Limbang while the 1st Battalion was there on operations in 1964 – 1966. Brigadier Bruce Jackman OBE MC wrote ‘Malcolm was Resident when I was commanding C Company – initially in Long Semado before we relocated to Ba Kelalan. He was delighted to have his old regiment nearby again. I saw a good deal of him and he was a great source of local knowledge as one would expect.’ (See also the photograph in the blog at http://2ndgoorkhas.com/malcolm-mcsporran-and-bruce-jackman-long-semado-1964/)
Malcolm McSporran was a popular, trusted and greatly respected Government Officer. In 1960, as DO Baram, he was tasked to construct a new airstrip on the Plain of Bah at Bario. The Director of the Public Works Department had declined to accept responsibility on the grounds of lengthy lines of communication but did produce a Technical Assistant to do the levels. Kelabits provided the labour force. Kelabit girls used rice pounders to flatten the area, supplemented by large numbers of Bawang from across the border with Indonesia. An RAF beverley aircraft provided an airdrop of heavy rollers and other construction equipment together with four cases of stout for a recuperating Penghulu and twenty cats to deal with the rat population threatening crops. Bario at the time was accessible only by several days hard trek from the nearest navigable river through thick jungle and arduous, steep terrain. The task was completed in three months and the Kelabits honoured Malcolm by conferring on him the Kelabit name of Ngekang Ulun, meaning ‘One who makes life better for others’.
Malcolm was delightful company, loved a good party and was renowned for his hospitality. Whether hosting over a thousand people from all over Sarawak at a party at his residence and grounds during the 1962 three day Marudi Regatta or receiving upriver people from the interior calling on him, a warm and memorable welcome was extended to everyone.
Malcolm and his son Anak returned to Sarawak thirty years later, in 1997. He thought people would have forgotten him, but he was overwhelmed by the welcome he received and declared that for him ‘ It was like coming home’. Twenty-five years later, on Malcolm’s death, Datu Ose Murang, former Deputy State Secretary Sarawak, wrote ‘I first heard of Malcolm McSporran from village elders in my early primary school days and as I travelled up and down the Baram river to school in Marudi and Miri. As Resident of Miri District from 2005, Malcolm’s name kept being mentioned to me as a revered and greatly respected leader. I finally met Malcolm in England in 1972 and was immediately struck by his charming and warm hearted personality. Malcolm was indeed a friend and a legendary public servant in his time.’
Jayl Laugub, former Secretary of the Council for Native Customs and Traditions Sarawak related a discussion with the late Temenggong Baya Malang, Paramount Chief of the upriver communities Miri Division, ‘The local Berawan, Tring and Penan communities were unable to understand or grasp the meaning of a national park and how the affected communities can benefit from it. Our District Officer in Marudi at that time (1959) was Malcolm McSporran.. He played a very important role in relieving us of our anxieties and articulating our wishes to the government so that is how the Gunong Mulu National Park was accepted and the land along the lower section of the Malinau River was assigned to the Penan and Berawan.’
Jeffrey Pasang Saging, Bario, a former School Headmaster, wrote ‘ the building of the new airstrip in Bario, organised by Mr McSorran, was completed in late 1960. I was a primary school student then and have a very vivid memory of the first flight on that airstrip. A twin pioneer plane came and landed safely with McSporran on board. I was in a group of nine students who were to register at the secondary school in Miri, and McSporran kindly arranged that we fly back with him. We landed in Brunei at the military base airstrip. From there, McSporran arranged for two taxis to take us to Miri. We had no passports to cross the international border, so McSporran packed us in in the boots of the taxis. After crossing over the border successfully, we emerged from the boots gleefully, thanking McSporran and finally moving on to our school.’
Malcolm retired in April 1968 and joined the Agricultural Training Board based in Shrewsbury. He was closely involved with local parish affairs including the founding of the Montford Parish Millenium Green which incorporated remains of the 12th century Shrawardine Castle set in a scheduled ancient monument site of eight acres in his home village of Shrawardine, Shropshire. On his death, tributes were paid to Malcolm for his ‘ Outstanding contribution to the Parish over many years’ and described as ‘Someone very special who will be for ever remembered in the years ahead.’ An English oak tree is to be planted on the Millennium Green in his memory.
Malcolm was, for many years, a keen sailor and his wife recalled sailing with him in 1965 in his tiny dinghy Spindrift in shark infested waters in the South China Sea. In England Malcolm sailed the tidal class Falcon dinghy at West Kirby Sailing Club in the Wirral of which he had been a full member since 1948 and became the oldest member. As a mark of respect the club flag was flown at half mast for seven days after his death.
Malcolm McSporran had for many years been a member of the Regimental Association/The Sirmoor Club. Both Malcolm and his wife attended the 2004 Durbar where Malcolm was delighted to March on parade alongside two old Gurkha soldiers from his old battalion.
JRH
Click here to return to the top of the page
Major Richard ‘ Rick ‘ Dunn late RAPC
Paymaster 2nd Battalion for two tours totalling more than 8 and a half years
Major Richard Kent Dunn known as ‘ Rick ‘ was born on 16 February 1941. He was the only son of Mr and Mrs Richard Dunn. He was educated at Chichester High School for Boys and in 1963 he married Miss Jennifer Barns. They had four children – Jacqueline, Arran, Melanie and Rebecca.
Rick enlisted on 6 February 1959 in the Royal Army Pay Corps and reached the rank of WO2. His long association with Gurkhas began in 1972 with an accompanied tour at the Area Pay Office, British Gurkha Depot Dharan and in early 1976 he was posted to the British Gurkha Centre Paklihawa. In October 1976 he was granted a Short Regular Commision in the Royal Army Pay Corps with seniority from April 1972 and was promoted Major in September 1985. He retired from the Army in February 1996.
He was attached to the 2nd Battalion as its Unit Paymaster on two occasions. The first time was from December 1979 in Cassino Lines, Hong Kong. He then accompanied the Battalion to Brunei and later returned with it to Burma Lines, Hong Kong until he finished his tour in December 1982. He was then posted as Unit Paymaster 36 Engineer Regiment based in Maidstone, Kent. In August 1985 he rejoined the 2nd Battalion in Church Crookham again as Unit Paymaster and moved with it to Gallipoli Lines Hong Kong , until he finished his second tour with the 2nd Goorkhas in April 1991. His next
appointment was as Unit Paymaster 38 Engineer Regiment at Claro Barracks, Ripon , North Yorkshire until 1994 after which he became Unit Paymaster to 1 Regiment Royal Logistics Corps, Bicester until his retirement in February 1996.
As a civilian Rick worked for Hutchinson Telecom ‘ Orange ‘ for a year before he was appointed Retired Officer Grade 2 as Regimental Administrative Officer at the 1st Battalion Infantry Training Centre, Catterick Garrison, Yorkshire until 2000.
He had been an Associate Member of The Sirmoor Club since he joined the Regiment. Rick Dunn was a fine sportsman who qualified as a football referee and coached the 2nd Battalion football team.
Rick and Jenny settled in Bedale, North Yorkshire where he enjoyed gardening. He died on 3 July 2024 aged 83.
JRH
Click here to return to the top of the page
Wartime officer and Headmaster of Loretto Junior School 1958 – 1981
Captain Hamish Galbraith Russell Galbraith was born on 19 September 1926, son of Mr Robert Jack Galbraith, late Royal Artillery and nephew to the 1st Baron Strathclyde. He was dducated at Loretto School and after the war went up to Christ Church, Oxford to read history. In 1954 he married Miss Sheila Guild who was the matron at Loretto Junior School. She predeceased him in 2008. They had three children: Robert, Susan and Frances.
Hamish Galbraith enlisted in 1944 and after having completed six months basic training in the ranks of 29th Training Battalion, Blackdown, he passed the War Office Selection Board. He volunteered for service in India and sailed out on the MV Monarch of Bermuda and was sent to Officer Training School Bangalore. Gazetted to The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders , Galbraith was seconded to the 2nd Goorkhas and joined the Regimental Centre as a Company Officer. He attended a weapon training course at Saugur, and afterwards was attached to Records and Accounts in the Centre. He then attended an education course and was appointed Education Officer and OC HQ Company at the Regimental Centre before being appointed OC Boys Company. Galbraith was a company commander in the Training Battalion during the internal security troubles in the early autumn of 1947 until he left Dehra Dun on
1 October 1947 for release from the Army. He sailed from Bombay for Liverpool on the RMS Franconia and was demobilized at Stirling Castle, Depot of The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.
After graduating from Oxford Hamish Galbraith became a schoolmaster and taught at Loretto Junior School and Cheam School. He was Headmaster of Loretto Junior School from September 1958 to July 1981 , after which he retired to his house on the Mull of Kintyre. In 1986 he became a Reader in the Church of Scotland , and in 1988 he and his wife moved from Argyll to live at Kinettas, Strathpeffer, Ross-shire. He died at Kinross on 10 May 2021.
JRH
Click here to return to the top of the page
Lieutenant Brian Bland served with the 2nd Battalion in 1946-48. After training at the Officers’ Training School Bangalore he was gazetted to an Emergency Commission in The Border Regiment but was immediately seconded to the 2nd Goorkhas. He joined the Regimental Centre in Dehra Dun and was posted to the 2nd Battalion in Dinapore, where he was appointed Mechanical Transport Officer. He is thought to have left for the UK and demobilization in late 1947 or early 1948 without having returned to the Regimental Centre. After his military service he went up to Magdelene College, Cambridge, where he trained to be a doctor.
Brian Bland married Miss Clare Paterson in Chiswick in 1952. He died on 16 September 2021.
Although he was a member of both the Regimental Association and the Sirmoor Club, latterly all contact with him had been lost.
JRH
Click here to return to the top of the page
Honorary Lieutenant Jiwanbahadur Rana MVO
Honorary Lieutenant Jiwanbahadur Rana (Kaucha) MVO was born in Almora, India where his father, Subedar Major Rankeshar Rana (Kaucha), was serving in the 1/3rd Gurkha Rifles. He spent his childhood, including his initial schooling, in Dehradoon and returned to his ancestral home in Bharse, Gulmi, Nepal as a teenager. One day while playing with his friends at a chautari in his village, he was approached by a gallawala who took him to Lehra, India and got him enlisted in the Brigade of Gurkhas on 7 October 1952. He was promptly shipped off to Sungai Patani in Malaysia, where he successfully completed his recruit training and joined the 2/2nd Gurkha Rifles.
As a young soldier, he made a name for himself by his physical fitness and prowess. A strong, robust and agile man, he quickly became the physical training instructor of the battalion and a key member of the shooting team. He was an excellent shot and played an instrumental role in leading and guiding the 2 GR shooting team to win the Major Unit Championship four years in a row.
The following are some of the competitions won by 2/2 GR during his time in the battalion:
- The very last shooting competition in Far East / Singapore based districts 1972
- The HKSAAM 1973-75
- The UK Southeast District SAAM 1975-79
- BISLEY / RASAAM 1977-80
During his almost 29 years of service, Major Rana toured several countries and participated in a number of military operations, including the famous Borneo Confrontation. One of the anecdotes he was fond of telling was about how he ran after two armed bandits who were trying to flee into the jungle and captured them single-handedly. He was mighty proud of the fact that his name was mentioned in dispatches (MID) for this and other acts of gallantry and bravery.
One of his proudest moments occurred on 13 March 1974 when he was selected to serve as a Queen’s Gurkha Orderly Officer at Buckingham Palace – a high profile and much coveted appointment that he carried out with utmost sincerity, loyalty and pride. On the successful completion of his tenure, he was decorated with a Member of the Royal Victorian Order (MVO) by one other than the late Queen Elizabeth II. He then returned to his battalion and took over the post of Gurkha Major, a highly respected and prestigious position among the Gurkhas.
An accomplished army officer with a distinguished military career, he exemplified the most outstanding military virtues that enabled him to attain accelerated promotions not just once but twice in his career. The culmination of his career took place on 29 April 1976 when he was promoted to Major (QGO), the highest possible rank among the Gurkhas. As a reward for his exemplary service, he was awarded the rank of Honorary Lieutenant before he retired from active military service on 23 February 1981. Even after retirement, he continued to serve as an Area Welfare Officer and Area Recruiting Officer before finally retiring completely in 1990 and settling down in Sanepa, Lalitpur. This shows how proud he was of his achievements.
Even though he was wheel-chair bound in the final years of his life, he never absented himself from regimental reunions. Being a true supporter of the Regimental Association, he was always eager to attend regimental events and contribute in whatever way he could. His final attendance at such an event was the recent Delhi Day celebration held in Kathmandu on 14 September 2024, where he was excited and very happy to meet his old friends.
Honorary Lieutenant Jiwanbahadur Rana (Kaucha) MVO was a soldier, officer, father, husband, friend, sportsman, social worker and above all a good human being who lived his life in the service of the people he loved and for the ideals he cherished. He will be fondly remembered by everyone who knew him – his family, friends, relatives, acquaintances and fellow officers.
(Obituary written by Major Kamansing Rana, his son)
Click here to return to the top of the page
Lieutenant Colonel JO Lawes LVO MC
Obituary from the Daily Telegraph 28 October 2024:
COLONEL JOHNNY LAWES, GURKHA WHO WON AN MC FOR HIS BRAVERY DURING THE MALAYAN EMERGENCY
His MC citation paid tribute to his courage, leadership and tenacity over several months of continuous jungle operations
Colonel Johnny Lawes, who died aged 97 on 30th September, was awarded an MC while serving with the Gurkhas during the Malayan Emergency and saw further active service on operations in Borneo.
In May 1956, Lawes was in command of Support Company, 2nd Battalion 2nd King Edward’s Own Gurkha Rifles (2/2 GR) and serving in Negeri Sembilan, Malaya. He was tasked with destroying the Bahau Armed Work Force (BAWF), a group of Communist Terrorists (CTs), in the Bahau Police District. This involved liaising with the police, enlisting the help of planters and carrying out reconnaissance in dangerous areas, sometimes wearing civilian clothes.
In July, intelligence indicated that the BAWF were planning to meet in a large field, devoid of cover, on a rubber estate. After a night approach march and a river crossing, Lawes and his men were lying in ambush when, late that afternoon, they saw the CTsThey were a long way off and moving away from the ambush area so Lawes decided to cut them off. Taking two of his best riflemen, he stalked the group for more than a mile through rubber plantations. After closing to within 300 yards, he saw that the CTs were on the edge of thick jungle and immediate action was needed to prevent them getting away.
Leaving one rifleman to cover the jungle edge with his Bren gun, he and the other rifleman ran forward over open ground to try to come to grips with the enemy. The CTs took cover behind trees and opened fire at a range of 60 yards before they broke and ran into the jungle under fire from the Bren.
Three CTs were wounded. One died the next day and, over the next five months, Support Company eliminated BAWF, accounting for eight killed, four captured and seven surrendered. The citation for the award to Lawes of an MC paid tribute to his courage, leadership and tenacity over several months of continuous jungle operations.
John Owen Lawes was born in London on August 29 1927. His father had served with The Hampshire Regiment and Royal Indian Army Service Corps. Always known as Johnny, he was educated privately in India, and in 1944 he enlisted as a trooper in the Southern Provinces Mounted Rifles. The following year he enlisted in the 1st Battalion The Royal Warwickshire Regiment at Poonamallee, near Madras.
After Officers’ Training School in Bangalore, in 1946 he was gazetted to an Emergency Commission in the Royal Hampshire Regiment and seconded to 2GR. He subsequently moved to Malaya in 1948 and transferred to the 2nd Battalion. The following year he resigned from the Army, but rejoined and served with the Royal Hampshire Regiment on a short service commission. On returning to 2/2GR on secondment, he was granted a regular commission.
After seeing active service in Malaya, he moved to Hong Kong with 2/2GR as adjutant. He attended Staff College Camberley in 1960 and then had a staff job at HQ Allied Land Forces, Norway.
In 1964, he commanded a company of 2/2GR on operations in Sarawak during the Confrontation with Indonesia. This undeclared war stemmed from Indonesia’s opposition to the creation of the state of Malaysia by merging Peninsular Malaya with the former British colonies of Singapore, Brunei, Sarawak and North Borneo (later known as Sabah).
Indonesian regular troops crossed the frontier into Sarawak in an attempt to establish bases in the jungle. British Commonwealth forces responded by setting up their own bases near the border with Kalimantan and mounting covert cross-border raids to pre-empt these incursions.
The border with Kalimantan followed the line of a steep ridge. Lawes was ordered to dominate this feature and the track which ran along it. Having quickly realised that his platoons would achieve little by clambering up and down 40 miles of rock face, he decided that higher authority could hardly object to what it knew nothing about and operated on the jungle slopes some 1,000 yards across the border into Kalimantan. His men found the tracks that Indonesian troops used to climb up to the ridge and these routes were patrolled and ambushed so effectively that they were forced to move their bases further away.
After attending the Joint Services Staff College, Latimer, Lawes moved to HQ Far East Land Forces as Deputy Assistant Adjutant General (Manning). In 1968 he assumed command of 2/2GR in Brunei, and his greatest contribution was his unceasing advocacy in the campaign to save the battalion from amalgamation. He was subsequently Deputy Commander HQ British Gurkhas, at Dharan in Nepal, and for the last three years of his Army service he was Military Attaché Helsinki.
He retired from the Army in 1978 and in 1981 joined the Sultan of Brunei’s Gurkha Reserve Unit. He became commandant in 1985 and retired in 1988.
During the Queen’s visit to Helsinki in 1976, the mayor of the city gave a dinner in her honour. When he rose to his feet to make a speech, he knocked over a glass of red wine which went all over the table. The Queen stared fixedly at Lawes. She said afterwards that had he smiled or reacted in any way, she would have burst out laughing. For his services during her visit, he was appointed LVO.
In retirement, he lived in a village in Somerset and enjoyed walking, travelling, entertaining and family gatherings. He was a member from its creation of the Sirmoor Club for British former Gurkha officers.
John Lawes married, in 1961, Annette Truss, née Wise, widow of Major DA Truss, late of 2GR. She died in 1992 and he is survived by a daughter, a stepdaughter and two stepsons.
(Click here to download the Times obituary)
Click here to return to the top of the page
Right Honourable Sir John Nott KCB PC MA
Sir John Nott, who served as Regimental Signals Officer with the 1st Battalion 1953-56, died on 6 November 2024. The following obituary appeared in the Daily Telegraph:
SIR JOHN NOTT, RADICAL TORY INDIVIDUALIST AND DEFENCE SECRETARY DURING THE FALKLANDS WAR
He was best known for storming out of a TV studio after Robin Day referred to him as ‘a transient here-today-and-gone-tomorrow politician’
Sir John Nott, who has died aged 92, was Defence Secretary at the outbreak of the Falklands War, having been the architect of cuts to the Royal Navy which, coupled with ambiguous signals from the Foreign Office, arguably precipitated the Argentine invasion. He survived a woeful performance in the emergency debate on the crisis only because Margaret Thatcher could not afford to lose him as well as her Foreign Secretary, Lord Carrington. Nott served on during the campaign to recapture the Falklands, then enjoyed a lucrative career in the City.
A radical Tory individualist in the mould of Nicholas Ridley or John Biffen, Nott was not an easy man. Birdlike and argumentative, he exuded an intensity that implied intellectual self-torture. Occasionally the angst would erupt, as when he tore off his microphone after Sir Robin Day called him a “transient here-today-and-gone-tomorrow politician”.
As Trade Secretary, he spurned most things foreign –save for his wife’s native Yugoslavia, and Mongolia, where he caught a record-breaking 25lb trout – and left the travelling to his deputy, Cecil Parkinson. He boycotted French wine because France would not buy produce from his Cornish farm, and when Japan exceeded its voluntary quota for car exports he carpeted the Japanese ambassador.
John William Frederic Nott was born in Bromley, Kent, on February 1 1932 into a family connected with the military since 1770. The son of a rice broker, he was brought up by grandparents in Devon and educated at Bradfield. At 17 he signed on, and after serving in the ranks for seven months, including his time at Mons Officer Cadet School, Aldershot, he was gazetted to a National Service Commission in the Royal Army Service Corps. He served as an RASC Recruit Training Platoon Commander in Oudenarde Barracks, Aldershot, for just over a year before he applied for a transfer and was sent on probation to the 1st Battalion The Royal Scots (The Royal Regiment) in Berlin.
Nott was gazetted to a regular [sic] commission in the 2nd Goorkhas and joined the 1st Battalion in Slim Barracks, Singapore, in August 1953. He served with the battalion in Johore as a company officer in C Company and later in the Kuala Kubu Bharu area of Perak, where he commanded C Company. Fighting Communist guerrillas, he found being shot at “wonderful”. From there he was appointed ADC to Major General Lancelot Perowne, GOC 17th Gurkha Infantry Division, for four months. He was subsequently ADC to General Sir Charles Loewen, C-in-C Far East Land Forces, based in Singapore, accompanying the General on a visit to India and Nepal which lasted for three weeks. He returned to the 1st Battalion in Johore Bahru as Regimental Signals Officer and Battalion Intelligence Officer until Lieutenant (later Field Marshal Sir) John Chapple took over the latter role in February 1956. Having decided to retire, and after saving enough to get him through Cambridge, he left the regiment in the rank of lieutenant in April 1956 and his regular commission ended in June. [Nott’s book ‘Memorable Encounters’ contains a chapter about his time in the 2nd Goorkhas, focused on Humbahadur Thapa, who was a signaller when Nott was Regimental Signals Officer and later became Gurkha Major – Ed].
At Trinity he read law and economics, and was president of the Union in 1959. Though called to the Bar he had his eyes on the City, and in 1960 he joined SG Warburg, inventing the local authority negotiable bond. Soon after leaving the Army he had had a vision in a French church that he was destined for the Cabinet, and in 1966 he was elected for the Cornish constituency of St Ives asone of the last four “National Liberal” MPs, actually a Conservative. On the Scillies he was advised not to bother canvassing one house, as it belonged to Harold Wilson.
The travails of the Newlyn fishermen and the tin mining industry, tourism and the hippy invasion of St Ives were prime concerns of a constituency Nott came to love, buying a 130-acre daffodil and livestock farm which became “the only thing I care about passionately”. In 1967, when the tip of Cornwall suffered pollution from the wreck of the supertanker Torrey Canyon, Nott lambasted Harold Wilson’s government for its combination of showmanship and unpreparedness. His 17 years representing the area were punctuated by tragedies at sea, notably the loss of the Penlee lifeboat in 1981.
Liberal on social issues, Nott – one of his party’s brightest thinkers – specialised in economic and tax policy. He joined other Tories from the City to pillory the 1968 Basle Agreement which began valuing the sterling reserves on a dollar basis, became secretary of the Conservative backbench finance committee, and by 1970 was speaking from the front bench.
Disappointed not to be in Edward Heath’s initial government, Nott joined it in April 1972 as Minister of State at the Treasury. The aftermath of decimalisation, the shakiness of the pound and the build-up of inflation during the “Barber Boom” posed challenges, but he performed with skill. Discovering that liberties were being taken with the money supply, he approached Heath – who told him to resign or shut up.
After the defeat of February 1974, Nott refused a job because of the offhand way Heath offered it. Heath attacked him for endorsing comments by Wilson in a non-partisan speech about the press, then himself hinted at coalition. Nott suggested Heath be curbed by having the 1922 Committee elect one-third of the Shadow Cabinet.
Mrs Thatcher, becoming leader, recalled him as a spokesman on economic affairs. Nott suggested breaking up failing State industries and handing them to the workers; savaged Peter Walker for advocating a prices and incomes policy; and begged Mrs Thatcher not to commit Britain to join the European Monetary System.
In 1976 she promoted him to the Shadow Cabinet as trade spokesman; he harried beleaguered Labour ministers, piercing even the hide of Denis Healey, who saw in him a future chancellor.
Mrs Thatcher, coming to power in 1979, made Nott Trade Secretary. He pushed through the Competition Bill, the cornerstone of her economic order; abolished Labour’s Price Commission; pioneered the demerging of major companies; tried to privatise British Airways, bringing in John (later Lord) King as a director; and settled the long-running argument over London’s third airport in favour of Stansted.
In January 1981 Mrs Thatcher made him Defence Secretary. Nott relished the challenge – and the opportunity to meet his Gurkhas in Nepal – but the move was his undoing. Francis Pymhad been moved for resisting Treasury-driven cuts, and Nott was appointed to call the bluff of the service chiefs (he did have a sticking point, prising £500 million from Sir Geoffrey Howeto cover a budgetary overshoot).
The Navy was the prime target, given the future cost of Trident. Leaks of the admirals’ resistance infuriated Mrs Thatcher, who sacked the Navy Minister Keith Speed; to prevent a recurrence, Nott ended the system of each service having its own minister. He also aroused mirth by proposing to revive the Home Guard.
The cuts announced that June were severe: frigates and destroyers were reduced by nine to 50; Chatham base and dockyard were closed; the carrier Invincible was sold to Australia and the Hermes paid off; the commando carriers Intrepid and Fearless were phased out; there was a manpower cut of 8,000; and the ice patrol ship Endurance was withdrawn.
Nott defended the package with verve, but could not stem the criticism from admirals, dockyard workers – one at Portsmouth punched him in the face – Tory backbenchers, the Reagan administration and Labour’s former naval persons James Callaghan and John Silkin, Nott’s Shadow. They charged that the decision on Endurance would embolden Argentina – as did Nick Barker, her captain, who had been warned of the junta’s intentions.
In March 1982 Nott announced the procurement of Trident 2, with the submarines based on the Clyde, as the Glasgow Hillhead by-election was lost to the SDP leader Roy Jenkins. Mrs Thatcher – who was starting to lose faith in Nott as a cost-cutter – acknowledged Trident’s role in the defeat, but when The Daily Telegraph’s Nicholas Comfort reported this, an overwrought Nott harangued him in the Lobby. Comfort could not understand why Nott should lose his temper so easily, but had his answer four days later.
April 2 1982 was a nightmare for the Government. It took hours to confirm Argentine claims to have invaded the Falklands and captured the Governor and the Royal Marine garrison. Carrington – an equal target of backbench anger – revealed that the Navy was too far away to help, and the Commons met for the first Saturday since Suez in furious mood.
Nott stood accused of bungling the defence of the islands, with his cuts discredited. He needed the speech of a lifetime, but Tories buried their heads in their hands as he denied being caught unprepared and tried to blame Labour. By the end Nott, white-faced, was pleading for support.
That would have been the end, had not Carrington made an equally ill-judged speech to the 1922 Committee and decided to resign. Nott also offered to resign, but Mrs Thatcher refused to let him do so.
The PM needed continuity, and in any case blamed the Foreign Office. She also realised that she and the service chiefs, not the Defence Secretary, would be the pivotal figures in prosecuting any war. In a second debate Nott got his confidence back, pledging the Royal Navy to “shoot first”.
Nott initially told Mrs Thatcher that recapturing the Falklands would be “too difficult”, expecting heavy casualties, but wisely did not labour the point. He sat in her “War Cabinet” alongside Willie Whitelaw, Pym (now Foreign Secretary), Parkinson and Sir Michael Havers, Attorney-General. He was beside her as she urged the nation to “rejoice” over the recapture of South Georgia, and himself announced to the House the sinking of Sheffield, the setback at Bluff Cove – and on May 4 the sinking of the General Belgrano.
Conspiracy theorists would insist he had lied to the House in saying that the Argentine cruiser was steaming towards the task force; in fact Nott and Mrs Thatcher were wrongly briefed and stood by the officers responsible. In 1984 he told a Select Committee it was “ridiculous” to suggest the Belgrano was sunk to scupper chances of peace.
The islands recaptured, Nott secured assurances from Geoffrey Howe that the cost would be borne by the reserve, and that ships lost could be replaced. He published a White Paper confirming the cuts, but reprieved Invincible and Endurance. He visited the Falklands to assure the islanders that they would be fully defended – and cancelled the garrison commander’s plans to fly his family home for Christmas because his troops would not have that privilege.
Before the conflict was over – and probably before it began – Nott was preparing to quit politics. Fulfilling a long-standing promise to his wife that he would leave after 15 years, he announced his decision that September but stayed at the MoD until January 1983. He left with a KCB, not a peerage, as he might have hoped. Michael Heseltine replaced him, and he left the Commons that May.
By then Lord Franks’s committee had completed its inquiry into responsibility for the invasion; Nott knew the thrust of its findings before clearing his desk. The Opposition and much of the media hoped that Mrs Thatcher and senior ministers would be pilloried, but Franks concluded that they could not have foreseen or prevented the invasion. But he did criticise Nott for the “inadvisable” decision to withdraw Endurance, revealing that Carrington had begged him four times to rescind it.
Nott the businessman had not always had a golden touch; Burmah Oil, which he joined in 1974, crashed, and the Rossminster tax-avoidance scheme which he advised fell foul of the Inland Revenue. But now he was luckier. He returned to the City as an executive director of Lazards specialising in commercial and industrial problem-solving; he started with a vain attempt to prevent Hanson taking over London Brick, then took the lead in the privatisation of the warship yards.
By the time Ian Fraser stepped down as Lazard’s chairman and chief executive in 1985, Nott was his natural successor, his goal to keep the bank “small, highly professional and light on its feet”.
He began with a warning that City self-regulation would end in tears, and went on to play a key part in the TSB flotation and the speculative Metsun bid to break up GEC, headed by Sir John Cuckney. Ernest Saunders would later denounce him as one of the “corporate Mafia” behind his ousting from Guinness.
Nott also became deputy chairman of Royal Insurance, using the experience gained there to fight a plan by Legal & General to distribute cash to shareholders which he felt should have gone to policyholders (including himself).
Despite his £1,562,959 Lazards salary – 28 times what he would have earned in the Cabinet – Nott claimed after leaving the greatly strengthened bank in 1989 that he had never enjoyed his time there.
He insisted he had left the “political club”, but politics followed him through the Belgrano saga and then Lazards’ involvement with Cuckney’s Westland, advised by Nott during the tie-up with Sikorski that triggered the resignations of Heseltine and Leon Brittan, Trade and Industry Secretary.
In 1992 Mrs Thatcher invited him to a 10th-anniversary dinner of Falklands insiders – among them Whitelaw, who with Nott had successfully proposed her son Mark for membership of Buck’s after two failed applications.
John Nott on his farm
Nott retired to his farm, ably run in his absence by his wife, but built a new portfolio: chairman of Etam, and from 1993 executive chairman of the food conglomerate Hillsdown Holdings. He took a stake in a forex company, Record Treasury Management, and became an adviser to Apax Partners and the City solicitors Freshfields, at last using his legal qualifications.
Nott had married Miloska Sekol, a Slovene, in 1959 after a whirlwind romance at Cambridge, and when Yugoslavia imploded in the early 1990s he energetically supported his wife’s campaigning for refugees.
He warned that Carrington, the EC’s first peace negotiator, was being “humiliated”, and accused John Major’s government of “appeasement” for not launching air strikes against the Serbs; he dismissed Douglas Hurd, the Foreign Secretary, as “a liability”.
Nott’s standing as a Tory elder statesman was recognised in 1999 when William Hague asked him to chair a commission “to examine the economic prospects for Britain if we keep the Pound”. At its press conference to announce that adopting the euro would indeed be harmful, he kept the Tory leader waiting because he was dissatisfied with the table.
In 2007 Nott drew on his experience of running a farm and supplying major supermarkets to write a coruscating letter to the Competition Commission demanding the break-up of Tesco. He ruffled local feathers in 2009 with an application to build two 82ft wind turbines.
Nott strongly advocated Brexit, and during the referendum of 2016 he suspended his membership of the Conservative Party in protest at David Cameron’s leadership.
Nott also found time to write Mr Wonderful Takes a Cruise (1988), Here Today, Gone Tomorrow (2002), Haven’t We Been here Before? (2007), Trewinnard – A Cornish History (2012), Mr Wonderful Seeks Immortality (2014) and Memorable Encounters (2018).
He is survived by Lady Nott, their two sons and a daughter, Sasha, who is married to the former East Devon MP Lord Swire and in 2020 published a memoir, Diary of an MP’s Wife.
Michael Willis served with John Nott and wrote this memoir of him:
Click here to download the Times obituary for Sir John Nott.
Click here to return to the top of the page