Researching David Lloyd

A left-handed batsman and left-arm spin bowler, he played nine Tests, with a highest score of 214 not out, and eight One Day International matches. In first-class cricket he was a successful all-rounder, scoring a career aggregate of more than 19,000 runs and taking 237 wickets. He captained his county from 1973 to 1977. Following his retirement as a player, he became a first-class umpire, and subsequently Lancashire and England cricket coach, resigning the latter post following the 1999 Cricket World Cup. He then became a renowned cricket commentator for Test Match Special, and later Sky Sports. He is also an author, journalist and columnist. In December 2021, Lloyd announced his retirement from commentating.

In December 1992, Lloyd fell victim to an apparent poisoning by acrylamide, a common laboratory chemical. As a result, he lay in a coma for three months and was left blind, mute, and quadriplegic. His former partner and fellow molecular biologist Vicki Calder was tried twice for his attempted murder. The first trial ended with a hung jury and the second acquitted her.

He was born in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex. He and his younger brother John Lloyd became two of the most successful British tennis players throughout the 1970s and 1980s. David captained the British Davis Cup team and became a leading figure in the Lawn Tennis Association.

For a short time he was chairman of Hull City A.F.C. and Hull FC. He also played a major part in making Tim Henman a world top 10 tennis player.

Born in Skewen near Neath, de Lloyd was the son of an insurance agent and the family moved with the latter's employment until they settled in Penparcau a village near Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, while David was a small boy. As a child, he met John Spencer Curwen, son of the inventor of the tonic sol-fa, and assisted Curwen in several demonstrations. David attended the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. In 1905, he became the college's first B.Mus. graduate. He obtained a grant to study in Leipzig and obtained a doctorate in music from the University of Dublin. In 1926, he replaced Sir Walford Davies as Professor of Music at University of Wales, Aberystwyth. De Lloyd became closely involved with the Eisteddfod movement, and was a collector and arranger of Welsh folk music. His arrangements were published as Forty Welsh Traditional Tunes in 1929. Many of his other works can be found archived at the British Library in Welsh and English here. Most recently his work 'Er Cof' was performed Sunday, 30 June 2019, Bethel Chapel, Aberystwyth by Meirion Wynn Jones (organ) as part of the Gregynog Festival.

He died in 1948. Sidney Northcote wrote, "The death of Dr. David de Lloyd has robbed Wales of a musical impulse she cannot afford to lose and certainly must not be allowed to forget."

A collection of his writings both personal and published can be found in the National Library of Wales.

Although already an experienced pilot he was considered too old at 29, to be called up for service during the Battle of Britain in the Royal Air Force in the Second World War, instead he became the senior flight controller based at Tangmere, Sussex during the Battle of Britain.

Extensive deer stalking, and frequent rifle shooting visits to Bisley ranges, Lloyd established the David Lloyd & Co. riflemakers company (registered company 05202134) at Pipewell Hall in 1936, and in the early 1950s developed the .244 H&H Magnum rifle cartridge, later adopted by Holland & Holland of London.

Although Lloyd had no formal training as a riflemaker, he employed a team of craftsmen from the London & provincial trade to build the rifles in the workshops at Pipewell Hall.

Lloyd developed the distinctive Lloyd rifle concept, and from the 1960s to the mid-1990s he built magazine-fed sporting rifles based on commercial Mauser 98 & Sako actions with distinctively integral scope sights, capable of dependably high accuracy at long ranges, and of handling modern high-intensity, flat shooting cartridges such as the .244 H&H, the .264 Winchester Magnum and the .25-06 Remington. Lloyd noted would that he attached a rifle to a scope, rather than the more normal saying of attaching a scope to a rifle.

Shooting Times voted the Lloyd rifle number 8 in its list of the top 12 Rifles of All Time, and Country Life magazine described Lloyd himself as “a National Living Treasure”. Lloyd rifles are owned by riflemakers Bill Ruger and Roy Weatherby, and by several owners of Scottish deer forests. In his deer-stalking career of over 60 years, Lloyd killed more than 5,000 Scottish highland red deer stags, the vast majority of them with rifles built by his company.

Lloyd's wife Evadne (“Bobby”, the longest-serving governor of the Royal Shakespeare Company in its history) keenly supported him in his business, and helped him to source fine walnut blanks for his rifle stocks from various European sources. On Lloyd's death in 1996 she took on the business, which by then was doing little trade, and ran it until her own death in 2003, when the company was sold to John Shirley, formerly Technical Manager with James Purdey and Sons of London. He subsequently offered the business name, goodwill and records of the David Lloyd company for sale at auction in London in December 2006.

During his lifetime, Lloyd was renowned in opera, oratorio, and in recital, in particular for his performances of Verdi and Mozart. As a Welshman, however, he is remembered most for his renditions of the hymns and folk songs of his native land.

Lloyd's scholarship primarily addresses Irish literature and culture, colonialism and nationalism. He has also published several volumes of poetry.

Lloyd came to public attention as a leader of a movement calling for an academic and cultural boycott of Israel. In response to the concerns that the boycott is a violation of academic freedom, Lloyd responded, “Israeli institutions are complicit in immense infringement on Palestinian academic freedom, so it’s really hard, it seems to me, for Israeli institutions to claim the rights of academic freedom that they are so systematically denying to their Palestinian counterparts.”

In a subsequent interview, Lloyd stated that "In the end, what we're aiming at is a full boycott of Israel, both academic and economic."