Obituaries
the Great Yorkshire Show, Mike made a few quips on the PA system about Tory handling of BSE. This drew guffaws from many of the farmers present in the audience, but he was not asked to commentate the following year. He was later reinstated and in 2014 was awarded the show’s Long Service Medal. A member of the Tenant Farmers Association and the Agricultural Lands Tribunal, he was also on the panel advising the Secretary of State for Agriculture. In 2014 he became a Fellow of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, receiving his award at the House of Lords. When he was at the agricultural college in the 1950s he met Peta Tucker, a poultry student, and they married three years later. A son and two daughters followed, all born in the Yorkshire Dales, and he would take the entire family to events in a huge cattle lorry, with the children’s ponies also on board. Diagnosed with prostate cancer five years ago, Mike never flagged. He retired from farming, sold the flock and moved a mile to East Witton. He continued writing and dictated the final chapter of his book about the history of an auctioneering company to his daughter, Philippa, a fortnight before he died. He is survived by his wife and children. An obituary appeared in The Telegraph on which this obituary is based.
Hamlet Primary School and was in Spenser. Holidays were spent with an aunt in rural Hertfordshire, where his interest in farming was kindled. After leaving Dulwich he went to Harper Adams Agricultural College at Newport in Shropshire, spending three years there. His working career got off to a shaky start and during his first five years in farming he was manager of six different farms. Excellent with livestock, he was, however, somewhat hapless in other areas, especially with machinery. On one occasion he was overseeing the loading of cattle and horses into two separate wagons and accidentally sent his employer, Duggie Stewart, who had won a show jumping gold medal at the Helsinki Olympics in 1952, into the cattle lorry along with the cattle. Later, while manoeuvring a tractor in a building, the front forks pierced a large water butt. Reversing the tractor, he then demolished a supporting upright before completely losing control and lifting the whole roof from the walls. He was dismissed from that farm. At the village of Filkins in Oxfordshire, his stay was brief after he dropped a heavy battery on a pipe and destroyed the entire irrigation system for a potato field. ‘Sometimes’, his wife later recalled, ‘I never knew whether it was worth unpacking’. In 1963 he joined a land agency at Leyburn, North Yorkshire, becoming the farming specialist on estates in Wensleydale and Scotland. After a decade there he left and went into partnership with Robin Hill, later the Marquess of Downshire, developing farm diversifications on the Clifton Castle estate, North Yorkshire. He also took on a farm tenancy at High Burton, a beautiful lowland farm on the river meadows of the Ure near Masham. There he established the Burton Limousin herd, which he had introduced to the UK from France in 1970, and his farm held the breed sales record for years. Limousin cattle are now the leading beef brand in this country. In 1989 he dispersed the cattle and moved across the river to Hammer Farm. At 750ft above sea level and north facing, it was a larger acreage but the sandstone pasture was less productive, harder to farm and qualified for few subsidies. It was here, farming sheep, that he appreciated the plight of the small Dales farmer. He also turned to journalism, where, for 35 years, he filed a provocative column for The Farmers Guardian as well as features for other farming magazines and regional and local newspapers. Well-groomed and charismatic, with swept back silver hair, he had an outdoorsy hue and wore colourful neckerchiefs under his open shirt collars and hacking jacket, with thick corduroys over lovingly polished shoes. Blessed with a mellifluous voice he was a first choice for the microphone in the cattle and hound rings at shows countrywide. From the Masham Sheep Fair and the Great Yorkshire to the Royal Show, his knowledge and quick wit were often in demand – but not always. In 1996, when Norman Lamont, then the Conservative candidate to become Harrogate MP, interrupted the judging during a walkabout at
James Graham Mallinson (1956-61) 26.12.1942 – 22.08.2015
Graham Mallinson was the son of Ian Mallinson, a long standing assistant master at Dulwich, teaching Chemistry. The family lived in Sydenham initially but later moved to next door but one to North Dulwich station. Graham came to the
College from the Prep and was in Spenser.
He left Dulwich in 1961 and his first job was as a test engineer with Tannoy, the world renowned manufacturer of loudspeakers and public address systems, in West Norwood. His job there entailed setting up and operating PA systems in client premises around the UK, including at the House of Commons. In 1976 Tannoy moved their premises to High Wycombe, but Graham moved to Decca in Crawley and he commuted daily from West Norwood. In 1978 new employment and an attractive relocation package was offered by Redifon, also in Crawley, and the family moved to Newick, East Sussex, in January 1979. After his time with Redifon he worked in Brighton with Gulton, later renamed West Instruments, where he spent many happy years as Drawing Office Manager and Chief Draughtsman, designing printed circuit boards. He retired in late 2006. In 1971 Graham had married Wendy Coysh and their first home was in West Norwood. In December 1976 their only child, Anthony, was born. Throughout his
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