Digital audio of a recorded interview with Neville Lyons, who is a distant relative of Joe Lyons and an active member of the LEO Computers Society.

Abstract: After a career as a Professional soldier, serving as adjutant while a junior officer and rising to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, found his metier in acting as a communicator. Discovering his distant relationship to Joe Lyons and the Lyons food empire started compiling presentations to interested bodies like U3A, and Probus making 166 presentations in a period of a few years.  In the course of compiling the story of Lyons he discovered LEO, met LEO Computer Society people and started about 2014 telling the LEO story, and applied to join the LEO Computers Society as a friend. Subsequently became more and more involved compiling and making numerous presentations. Active member of LEO Computers Society.

Transcript :

Neville Lyons interview

DAVID PHILLIPS: It’s the 19th of April 2022.  I’m David Philips and I’m interviewing Neville Lyons at his house just south of Guildford, and I’m going to be talking to him about his involvement with LEO and as a trustee of LEO Computers Society.  So, good morning, Neville. 
NEVILLE LYONS: Good morning.
DP:	I’ll be recording this interview as part of the LEO Computers Society oral history project.  The audio version and the transcript will be lodged at a central archive and made available for researchers and members of the public.  So your involvement with LEO I know has come fairly late where you’re a trustee, but clearly the Lyons connection goes back some considerable distance.  We’d like to talk about that.  First of all though, can you tell me a bit about your own self and your early days, for instance tell me when you were born, where you were born, a bit about the parents and the background. 
NL:	Yes, well, thank you, David.  I was born in Raynes Park near Wimbledon in 1928, 16th of April to be precise.
NL:	We lived in that house where I was born only for about four years, and after that we moved to London or Hampstead actually, to be nearer to some of the rest of the family and remained in that part of the world until the war broke out, and then we evacuated to Guildford. 
DP:	So just tell me, what did your father do?  What was his involvement? 
NL:	Well, my father, strange enough, his side of the family worked in the corn trade, supplying animal food to farmers and so on, and they built up a very good, respectable corn trade business, in fact they got the Royal Warrant to  supply to the Royal Mews, so that was my side, and in fact my father used to say he supplied food for animals where Joe Lyons supplied food for human beings. 
DP:	What was his connection with Joe Lyons?  What was the relation?  
NL:	The connection was that my grandfather and Joe Lyons were cousins which makes me a cousin twice removed from Joe Lyons. 
DP:	Did you have or did your parents have much contact with that side of the family? 
NL:	No.  They didn’t really have any contact.  I think my grandfather was considerably younger than Joe, something like 13 or 14 years younger.   They hardly even talked about Joe Lyons. 
DP:	 This was early days for the Joe Lyons business presumably? 
NL:	Well, we’re talking about, I mean, the Joe Lyons business, going into a bit of detail, it started in 1887, that’s when it started, when Joe was, was contacted by the Salmon & Gluckstein families, who wanted to start catering, and they’d been involved very much in the tobacco industry, and they wanted to start catering because they weren’t happy with the catering facilities at the large exhibitions.  But they didn’t want to get their name, if you like, soiled in the catering trade which was not considered a very high class at the time, so they asked their friend, Joe, to join them, and to give his name to the company, in return for which he became chairman until his death for 30 years.  
DP:	Well, meanwhile though, your father has moved or the family has moved to London still  corn merchants. 
NL:	When we moved from Wimbledon, yes, he carried on doing that until the war, and then he joined up and the business closed down, and he had to find something else to do after the war, and he went into the toy business.
DP:	Could you recall war time at all?
NL:	Oh, yes, I was 11 years old when the war broke out, and I was at prep school and then…
DP:	Where was that? 
NL:	Well, it started off, before the war I was  at a Hampstead Prep School but then I was transferred in Guildford to another day school called Lanesborough and my parents wanted me to go to boarding school, so I went to a series of different schools during the war and then I ended up at a  public school Haileybury College.    
DP:	Right.  Which was outside of London? 
NL:	Hertfordshire,  near Hertford.  
DP:	So you weren’t aware of bombs falling? 
NL:	We did have the odd bomb, we had a V2 fairly close by, and, oh, yes, a V1, which was not all that far away, but we were out of the main range of bombing I suppose. 
DP:	So your father came back from the war, entered into the toy business which must’ve been pleasing for a young man I suppose or perhaps you were past toys at that stage?  
NL:	He was always interested in me having toys even before that.  But, yes, I mean, by that time, there wasn’t an interest I suppose but, yes, considering he started off from scratch and he became a toy wholesaler, and he was very industrious, very intelligent, and seemed  to do pretty well in his field. 
DP:	What about you then?  You were at Haileybury?  
NL:	Yes. 
DP:	And you left there to go to college after? 
NL:	No, what I was there till about 17 ½  , and at that stage, the war was still on.  No, sorry, I’m getting my dates wrong.  The war finished that year in May, didn’t it, and it’s the V-E Day, and then, yes, V-E Day was in May, VJ Day was later.  But I left towards the end of that year and my father was always interested in my going to business and he’s had some sort of connection with the  Lewis’s Department Stores. There were  these Stores called Lewis (not John Lewis) in the Midlands and Northern England, and he arranged for me to work for one of the Stores  in Birmingham, until I was called up then for National Service.  So I joined up and I was then selected for a commission  during National Service as a National Service officer at the age of about 19 ½  into the Royal Artillery.  I then enjoyed my time and I hadn’t decided what I wanted to do, so, I decided to apply for a regular commission.  And when I got the pass to a regular commission, I was told that there was no vacancy in the Royal Artillery but I could choose one of my other options and I chose the Royal Signals and I remained in Royal Signals for the rest of my main career until the age of 49.    
DP:	Well, let’s just step back a bit to your national service entrance.  Where did you train? 
NL:	Oh, I trained at a camp called Ranby Camp near Nottingham I think it was, because I was at that time during my service to this Lewis’s firm in Birmingham, so that’s where I was called up.  So I was called up I suppose to one of the nearer training centres, Ranby Camp, where I spent six weeks, so I got to the bottom of things and basic training.  And then after that I was sent to a Royal Artillery training camp in North Wales, Towyn, where I spent I think it was about 10 weeks on anti-aircraft guns.  And then that’s where I got my what was called an emergency commission, and so I did my officer training at  Aldershot Mons Barracks  followed by Deepcut where I did my gunner training. 
DP:	But in fact you went into signals rather than in artillery? 
NL:	In signals because at that stage, this is 1947 when the Indian Army had just packed up and officers from the Indian Army became redundant, those who wanted to stay in the army came back to the UK, and a lot of them went into the gunners, and that’s what sort of led to the overflow of officer rank in the Royal Artillery.  So that was supposedly the reason why I couldn’t get a commission into the Royal Artillery which in the end pleased me because of peace time I was far better off in the Royal Signals where we’re actually doing our job rather than in for the gunners where you were training for war. 
DP:	So where did you start then with the signals call, where were you based? 
NL:	I got my regular commission and got posted to York for about three months but that was just a sort of attachment where they were considering where to send me and I was sent to Singapore as my first posting.
DP:	This is about what, 1947, ’48? 
NL:	Here we are 1950 for my regular commission.  So I went to Singapore, went out by a very old ship, four weeks journey on the I think it was SS Cambridgeshire, which was built in the first World War, and at that stage the Korean War had just started, so a lot of fellow passengers were on their way out to Korea.  I was at Singapore and I went to a regiment which was called 19 Air Formation Signal Regiment, they supplied communications for the air force, and so I was based at RAF Changi    There were a  tremendous number of troops in Singapore in those days.  Of course the emergency in Malaya was the main thing that’s going on.
DP:	What was Singapore like?  Was it being devastated by the Japanese invasion?  
NL:	No, this is 1950,   I really enjoyed my posting there.  I was there for two and a half years or perhaps three years, and  I was very fortunate because I was a lieutenant by that stage.  And the adjutant was about to be posted home and they were very short of captains in the regiment, so I was given a temporary captaincy.   I was aged about 23 then.  And I was given the job of adjutant  which was very fortunate. The commanding officer of the regiment at that stage had recently been killed, he was in an accident up country in Malaya, so it was being commanded by the second in command who was a major, and then his job was taken over by a very learned officer who spent his life in war time at the radar  research establishment in Malvern, James Haigh, and he came out to command the regiment.  
DP:	Famous name, yes. 
NL:	Yes.  And so that was my time in the regiment.  My main sort of off duty activity was sailing.  I learned to sail in Singapore which is great for me.  
DP:	What was your main function though as an adjutant?
NL:	Yes, the adjutant of the regiments is  aide to the commanding officer, so you act as basically as his secretary, and put out all the orders in his name and arrange disciplinary actions, that sort of thing, and go around with him on inspections. 
DP:	Tell me about the impact of your joining up, on your family, because presumably your father wanted you to go into business with him. 
NL:	He would’ve liked me to go into business with him, you’re quite right, but they wanted me to do what, I felt I wanted to do, so they were happy, and were particularly happy when I got this temporary captaincy which normally, I mean, (I’m not so sure it’s the same now, it probably is), you go from one rank to the next, mainly by age, and I was fortunate to get this at the age of 23 whereas normally I wouldn’t have got it until I was about 27.  And even when I left Singapore and came home on different postings, I was able to retain the captaincy.
DP:	Meanwhile though, back at home, you had gone, did you have brothers and sisters or anyone else that could go into the family firm?
NL:	Not really.  I have a brother, a younger brother, but he didn’t want to do that.  I mean, he did his own thing and he and I rather lost contact at that stage and, so, he just wasn’t weren’t into it.  So my father carried on until sort of retirement age without any members of the family at all. 
DP:	What happened to his business when he retired? 
NL:	Packed up really.
DP:	So meanwhile you’re in Singapore, what’s happening in Singapore at this time?  
NL:	Well, it was the base for operations up country in Malaya as it was here, they were fighting the communist bandits in Malaya, and Singapore was responsible for supply, and the RAF were air dropping to our patrols.  There were three RAF stations in Changi.  I was at the Air Headquarters Malaya and then there was a Station Headquarters and Far East Air Force HQ, so it was a very big garrison. 
DP:	But now you’re in this rather technical area of the army as it were.  Were you learning anything about signals themselves and how to send and receive? 
NL:	Oh, yes.   I had to go on courses. I went on a course for young officers which some of us go on, and when I came back from Singapore, I went on an upgrading course, so your life in the army is dotted around with courses quite a bit. 
DP:	Now, no computers at that stage? 
NL:	No, it was all line or radio transmission, yes.  HF radios and VHF radios and that sort. 
DP:	Did you feel attracted to the technical aspect? 
NL:	Well, yes, although I didn’t personally have a lot to do with the technical side of things and, yes, in fact when you were doing your training, even when I was training to be an officer at Deepcut with the gunners, we used to do radio exercises there, because they had these old what were called  22 sets - so that was my first experience into signals.
DP:	How long were you in the army in all then?
NL:	Total of 31 years. 
DP:	What did you become?  What rank had you achieved? 
NL:	I finished as Lieutenant Colonel. 
DP:	Well, that’s a pretty senior position, isn’t it? 
NL:	Well, yes.  It is.  I mean, I suppose if you looked at the average retirement, I suppose major is probably average.  And then you obviously had to be…you are subject to annual reports from your senior officer, and that goes up to a high level.  And then once you get to the rank of major, anything above that has to be looked at.
DP:	Can you think of particular highlights of your time in the service?  
NL:	I suppose Singapore  would be a highlight.  And in terms of wherever else I served, Germany,.
DP:	Where?  Whereabouts in Germany were you? 
 NL:	I suppose the nearest place would’ve been  Bunde, near Bielefeld.  No, I started off in Germany at north, Oldenburg which is near Hilden, and strange enough I was posted to a unit there which I looked after signals for the gunners.  Soon after I arrived there, we disbanded.  There was a big disbandment.  I can’t remember what year it was but it would’ve been in the  mid-1950s and the army went through a big sort of disbandment era, and I was posted to this unit called five 5 AGRA Signal Squadron, AGRA standing for Army Group Royal Artillery, and the army group consisted of about I think there are three heavy anti aircraft regiments and two light anti aircraft regiments which soon after I arrived they started disbanding them, so I don’t have very much field experience with that unit because I was only there for less than a year, and then I went on to Bunde  where I joined a divisional signal regiment. 
DP:	Pick up a bit of German when you were there, the language? 
NL:	Well, training areas, I can’t really remember where we did our training but we did…you were training all the time because this was during the cold war and you suddenly were called out at night time to do a deployment in the field.  
DP:	So, where did you complete your time at the army? 
NL:	Aldershot. 

DP:	What were you doing there?   
NL:	Well, it was at the unit which looked after communications for the army in this country because we had a certain amount of dedicated, mainly landline communications for military units deployed in the UK. By that time, I was a staff officer, I had done my staff training or technical staff training it was at Shrivenham.  That was the Royal Military College of Science and I was doing my final appointment as a grade 1 staff officer. 
DP:	Now, you left - you were what, 50? 
NL:	I was 49 years old, so it would’ve been 1977. 
DP:	So what did you do then? 
NL:	Well, I was very fortunate.  I wasn’t going to get further promotion, I’d been told that, and the branch of the MOD who looked after officers postings in my field contacted me because they’d been contacted by somebody who was looking for a retired officer to join them, and it turned out that this organisation was called the Electronic Component Industry Federation, and they were a sort of organisation that looked after the interests of manufacturers of electronic components, large manufacturers like Marconi and Plessey and smaller manufacturers, and they wanted somebody to work for them because they had a chap who was retiring. So I went along for an interview, I had no idea what a trade association was at the time, and it turned out that the way the contact had been made was by one Sir Ronald Melville who had been a Permanent Secretary at the war office, the MOD. He knew his way about the military side of things, and that’s how he contacted them.  So I went for this interview and they had these offices in at the top floor of Liberty’s in Regent Street, London. And a couple of months later, they contacted my boss again and said they would like me to join them.   
DP:	Your boss in the army? 
NL:	Yes.
DP:	He was still in the army? 
NL:	He was.  I was still working in the army in Aldershot. 
DP:	So next stop top of Liberty?  You then went to the top of Liberty’s store. 
NL:	yes.  And so that became my interest for another 14 years, I’m very lucky. 
DP:	what about your life during this time?  Had you married or had a partner? 
NL:	No, I didn’t marry.  actually, for various reasons, marriage didn’t come my way.  I was fortunate enough in later life to meet the love of my life, we became partners, but that’s of course another story
	So Electronic Component Industry, the ECIF, and my job was, well, they had a very small staff at the top if you like, I was a director, and I looked after such things, as exhibitions, and I was pretty good at writing and I was secretary of various groups within that organisation, and we had exhibitions at Olympia, for our members  and overseas in Paris and Munich.  So that was very interesting.  
DP:	What was your title at this point? 
NL:	I was joined as assistant director.  It was very odd because there’d been a couple of organisations who merged together, so we had two directors.  The one I talked about was Sir Ronald Melville who’d come from the MOD, and another chap who was also…Bill Barrett , who was his colleague, if you like, so there were two directors, and I was assistant director. 
DP:	How did you find the transition from army? 
NL:	I enjoyed it actually because in the army you were trained in Method of Instruction, and giving presentations, that sort of thing.  I found civilian life work rather lacks in that way, and I was able to sort of exert my own talents if there was a presentation needed or minutes, taking minutes of meetings and that sort of thing, keeping people informed about things which one had to do in the army. 
DP:	You were a natural adjutant all the way, were you?  
NL:	Well, I suppose it was, yes. 
DP:	So what was happening in the industries that you were now representing? 
NL:	Well, we were finding that for example there was a lot of competition, particularly from the Japanese on semi-conductors and that sort of thing.  And we were involved quite a lot with the government on trying to limit the amount of imports in competition with our own, that was one of the main things that we did.  
DP:	Was that successful? 
NL:	Not really.  But  the other area in which I became involved, it was that they wanted…we had this equivalent organisation within the European union, or the France, Germany, Italy and so on and so forth, and at that stage, when I joined, they had meetings on a sort of quarterly basis with the other organisations, which became known as EECA, European Electronic Component Manufacturers Association.  And it wasn’t going very satisfactorily because the chairman (or they used to call the president) of EECA used to change I think it was on an annual basi(s, and he would have a secretary who came from the same country as he did, so that the chairmanship rotated between the members of EECA. There were six countries at that stage.  The European Union was nothing like as large it is now.  My own chairman was a Brit, and I was asked to become his secretary.  Well, with due modesty I must have done the job pretty well, they liked having a Brit as a secretary because that was the language they spoke in.  So they asked me to become a permanent secretary.  Well, of course I still had the job, the UK job, and it was not practical proposition to become permanent EECA secretary.  
DP:	Where was this located? 
NL:	Well, this is the thing, each time the chairman changed, the secretary changed, so he remained in his own country, but they wanted to have somebody who could be the liaison between themselves and the European Union Commission, you know, European headquarters in Brussels.  So we reached a sort of compromised solution whereby I set up an office in Brussels which I used to frequent.  Well I used to actually attend for a period of three or four days a month to do my job for EECA and then go back to the UK and do my job for the UK.   
DP:	How did you travel there? 
NL:	Travelled by air.  And this office in Brussels was already there for another organisation which I wasn’t involved in but I was able to use the clerical services of this other organisation.  
DP:	And were you drawing two salaries as well? 
NL:	Yes.  From that point of view it was good but looking back on it, I mean, I was much younger then.  If I’d been married and had a family, I don’t think I would’ve done it.  But as it was, yes, I was able to do it, and, yes, I enjoyed doing it. 
DP:	Were you addressed as colonel throughout this time or? 
NL:	No, but, I mean, I didn’t want to be necessarily addressed as colonel but I think the French in particular are sort of interested in this so to them I was Colonel Lyons.  
DP:	So how long did you stay with the association? 
NL:	Well, I was there from the time I left the army until I was about 63 I think, so it was 14 years, yes. 
DP:	Now during this time, LEO was developing. 
NL:	Oh, yes. 
DP:	Did you come into contact with that company? 
NL:	No. I mean, that’s an interesting way.  Perhaps you would like me to tell you how this all happened. 
	Because we’re talking about when I left service in these two organisations, it was 1997 I think.  So I didn’t really get to know about LEO, till at least 10, 12 years later.  And the way I got into that, this is another story which you’ll probably like for me to tell you now.  
DP:	But just tell me, during your time at the association, was the word computer used?  Were people aware of supplied components to the industry? 
NL:	Yes.  When I was in the latter part of my time with EECA, we got into desktop computers, so any letters that I’d previously given to a secretary to type were put straight onto the desktop computer, and that was…I suppose during the last year or so of my service. 
DP:	But was there any feeling about the computer industry in the UK growing and requiring components from your member companies? 
NL:	Yes.  And of course, some of our member companies were at loggerheads with the computer companies wanted to get the cheapest components which were coming from Japan, and we, our member companies, weren’t content with that and that’s how we got them to use support anti-dumping actions.  
DP:	So how did you learn about LEO then? 
NL:	Well,  this goes back into  how did I learn about the Lyons history. 
DP:	Were you aware of the Lyons’s activity? 
NL:	Well, obviously I knew about the Teashops, I knew about the Corner houses.  But there was a lot I didn’t know about.  And it so happens that I met for the first time in my life a very distant cousin who had started the family tree, produced a copy of the family tree which showed the relationship with Joe Lyons, and also a book which you presumably know of by Peter Bird, the history of the first food empire, and he lent me a copy of his book, and that’s what got me interested into the Lyons history, and that’s what led me to start doing talks on Lyons.     
DP:	Yes.  But who initiated that?  Someone at the Lyons organisation must have thought that you’d be a good person to articulate the history?  
NL:	I suppose with my sort of talent in presentations, I decided that it will be a good idea to compile a presentation. Because in retirement I’m a member of different organisations who give talks and lectures to things like  U3A, PROBUS club. I’m a member of  my own Royal Signals Association, and we all  can have speakers from all over the place.  So I suppose I initiated myself really. 
DP:	Who would you have gone to at Lyons to suggest this then? 
NL:	I didn’t go to Lyons because by that time Lyons weren’t existing.  Lyons went out of business in the mid 1990s, that was they’d already lost their independence and  in 1978  they joined up with Allied Breweries and became Allied Lyons.  They then sort of phased out all their activities over that period.  I formulated the presentations.  But, I suppose what you could say is that I got in touch with Peter Bird who wrote the book and we met, and he supplied me with quite a few photographs for the presentation, and I went through my presentation with him at one stage.  I found him very, very helpful
DP:	So on whose behalf were you making these presentations  and to whom were you presenting? 
NL:	Well, I made a list actually that I’ve given over the years since 2008. 166 presentations on the Lyons story, and 15 presentations on the LEO story, and I’ve got a list of  everybody who I’ve given presentations to.  U3As for example, I must’ve given presentations to over 30 different U3A organisations, PROBUS clubs, women’s institutes.   I didn’t advertise, I haven’t advertised the presentations, it’s all a matter of word of mouth. Somebody hears so they recommend it to somebody else, and that’s how it goes on. 
DP:	So in preparing a presentation, you would clearly have to learn about LEO and the involvement of Lyons with LEO.  So tell me about that.  Did you find that interesting? 
NL:	Very interesting indeed, yes.  And there, again, books, websites.  I mean, again Peter Bird wrote the book on LEO, and so I got information on that, so other books that I’ve read, a very good one called A Computer Called LEO by Georgina Ferry, who is a very good scientific writer and so on.  So I compiled the LEO story but in fact the way the LEO presentations went is that I wrote from what I’d read and heard, I wrote an article about LEO, which was published in the Royal Signals Institution Journal and that was the article.  
DP:	Yeah.  You’re showing me the magazine now which is dated summer 2015, volume 33 of the Royal Signals Institution Journal.  Well, I’m turning to page 32 where I can see a picture of your good self and there’s a classic shot of LEO I.  Well, part of it.  The story of the first business computer by Lieutenant Colonel (Retired) Neville Lyons.  
NL:	Well, that’s a military journal. 
DP:	And this is quite a long article. Six pages of it. 
It is quite a lot.  And you’ve even got LEO III in here, 1963.  Very good.          Now, you’ve acknowledged, , Peter Bird, Georgina Ferry, LEO Computers Society and Joe Lyons and Co. 
NL:	So that was the article that came before my talks.  And in fact talking of the articles, that was repeated in this magazine. 
DP:	So I’m now looking at something called Resurrection, The Chartered Institute for IT.  Now, this is autumn 2016 and there you are, page 19? 
NL:	Yes. 
DP:	The familiar LEO I photograph and several…well, it’s the same article? 
	but several more pages because it’s a smaller format. 
NL:	I met this chap who was interested in getting the article from the British Computer Society and he was at one of our LEO reunions.  That’s how that article came about. 
DP:	Now, tell me how you actually came to meet the LEO people? 
NL:	The first time I met any of them was I think  in 2014 at the Science Museum when they were opening the Information Age gallery in which parts of LEO are exhibited.  And it was opened by the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh.  And that’s where I met the first of any of the LEO people.  Chairman, Peter Byford was there.  Frank and Ralph Land were there and, so, I introduced myself to them, and at that stage I obviously  hadn’t joined the LEO society but I mentioned to Peter Byford that I might like to join, and followed it up with an email asking if I could join. 
DP:	Have they heard of you at this point?  They’re aware that you’d published articles?  
NL:	Peter had heard of me because I think it was the year before or at least it was a year or two before when they had a reunion which was written about in the press at the Science Museum, and also a short film was made to demonstrate some of the pioneers who were still around who could talk about LEO. So that’s when I contacted Peter Byford and told him about myself.  And there was nothing to follow up it then until this Information Age gallery opening. 
DP:	So what happened then?  
NL:	I made contact and I said I would like to join.  He said it so happens that we recently had a meeting in which we created a category called Friends of LEO.  So I joined as a friend. 
DP:	What is a Friend of LEO? 
NL:	Anybody who has interest in LEO.  But, I mean, that no longer exist because they have decided that anybody who has the interest in LEO should become a full member, so there’s no category as a friend now.  
DP:	So you became a full member? 
NL:	So then I became a full member. 
DP:	But you became a trustee, how did that…?
NL:	I became a full member in 2014 and in 2019 I became a trustee. 
DP:	How did that come about? 
NL:	They were looking for trustees…because they’d recently become a charity.  I think originally when I contacted them, they weren’t a charity, they become a member of the charity commission, and they were looking for inviting people to become trustees, and I put up my name.  And at the reunion which they held in 2019, I was elected as a trustee. 
DP:	What are the responsibilities of the trustees?  
NL:	Well, we are given various different activities if you like and my responsibility is publicity.
DP:	What do you do?
NL:	Arranging articles in different publications.  Arranging talks for members.  The way this happened was that my own talk, we arranged to circulate to members who would like to have it, and I think we circulated to about 30 different members of whom some have given the talk.  We’ve asked them to feedback and we’ve had feedback from the talks.  But by no means all of them have but I would say probably about 10 or 15 have given talks.
DP:	Are you still giving talks? 
NL:	Well, come COVID, I started giving them on, Zoom, and I got  two lined up for this year so far.  Yes, so, it’s a good medium because you can give it to far and wide and no travelling involved. 
DP:	It’s been recorded?
NL:	Yes.  In fact, I gave one  last Thursday to my local U3A, a group of 19th and 20th century history group and I gave that talk last week and it’s been recorded.  
DP:	Well, you have wide interest because I always got some inkling that you had interest in the arts and I found you, I googled you and found you giving a talk.
NL:	World War II artists? 
DP:	It was excellent. 
NL:	Well, I mean, I got a list of the talks that I’ve given here.  I’ve listed the numbers of talks, and that’s the war artist one there. 
DP:	So I’m looking at your annual analysis.  So, goodness.  So from 2008 to 2021, you’ve given the Joe Lyons Story 166 times.  That’s quite impressive.  Meanwhile, LEO, well, not bad, 15 times since 2015 to 2021, so basically six years. But you must’ve been zooming, so you’ve given 15 talks to that.  The war artists that we spoke about, you’ve given nine talks.    A total of 213 talks.
	So do you have much contact with the LEO people still with the Lyons, etcetera? 
NL:	On the committee   we have a committee meeting once every three months, all by zoom since COVID, and I think probably it will carry on even now because it’s such a much easier way of getting people together, so the LEO committee, our trustees are all over the country, yeah.  So it’s quite an effort for them, to get people together. 
DP:	But zoom makes it so effortless now, doesn’t it.
NL:	Effortless and also we have zoom forums which you presumably know about because it’s something that any members can join and the last one we had was a few weeks ago after Mary Coombs died.  I mean, we have people on these forums from Canada, Trinidad and all over.
 DP:	So, where are you know then with LEO?  Do you have a schedule of activities?  You’ve got committee meetings in the diary?  
NL:	Yes.
DP:	What about presentations?
NL:	Well, very recently   not last Sunday but the Sunday before.  We had what you might call a mini reunion.  They’ve been trying to build up…because they have these reunions, have been having them at every 18 months or so but because of COVID they had to abandon them. Then they didn’t have a very good take up so they decided to have a smaller event which we had at the Queen’s Head which is in Brook Green below where Cadby Hall was.  And that was very good, very enjoyable.  We had about 30 people there.  And the oldest was Ray Shaw who had his 98th Birthday.  He is the only living, remaining engineer,  of LEO I.  He worked for people like John Pinkerton.  And Frank Land of course was there and   a few of the committee people.  There was one guy, we were split up at tables for lunch, and I shared a table with a Roger Emsley and his wife who had come over from Canada and had worked on LEO II or III I think, and he said he came over from Canada especially for that event which was pretty good.   
DP:	It’s very good. 
NL:	I was in charge of the raffle.  Because we had contact with a chap who recently died, and left a lot of memorabilia with his wife and happened to live   not far away so I was able to go over and collect quite a lot of the stuff which I took up and we had a free raffle of it.
 DP:	Have you been to Bletchley Park?
NL:	Yes. 
DP:	Did you find that interesting? 
NL:	Yes.
DP:	So there are various computer organisations as it were now.  America as well as Europe.  Do you have any contact with them? 
NL:	No. 
DP:	Well, I think we’ve come to the natural conclusion of our talk.  Is there anything that I may not have touched on that you’d like to talk about? 
NL:	No. 
DP:	I see you’ve very nicely made some notes. 
NL:	I think we’ve covered them pretty well.  I’ve told you the books that I’ve read.  So the other books I read on LEO are User Innovation by David Caminer. Electronic Brains by Mike Hally.  And not to do with LEO but still with the Lyons Company …Elstow which is the place where during the war Lyons controlled a bomb making factory.  Were you aware of that?  Elstow is a place where John Bunyan, lived.  “The Tinkers of Elstow” about this bomb making activity was written H.E. Bates. John Bunyan was a tinker, and it’s a very well written little book, nothing to do with LEO of course, but it’s to do with one of the many activities that Lyons’s company were involved in.  
DP:	LEO Computers was an extraordinary venture. 
NL:	People are amazed, the general public don’t know about LEO because it’s not something the general public got involved in but it was a backroom activity but an amazing activity for a catering company. 
DP:	Well, thank you for showing me this book.  It’s delightful.  It’s quite a slim volume but it’s very nice.  It’s got some nice illustrations, little drawings inside, all about Mr Bunyan.  
NL:	I mean, the various things I suppose which was come in my interest because as I say publicity for the LEO trustees, and this is a list of media activities. 
DP:	So you’re passing me an A4 sheet and it’s headed LEO Media Activities update March 2020, and I see they’ve been on the world service, BBC World Service, Spectator, Times online, U3A Third Age Matters, Probus Magazine, BP Society.  It’s pretty comprehensive.  So you’re doing a fantastic job to keep the name LEO alive.
	And spreading the awareness of it.
NL:	Articles.  And we’ve, you know, having done these articles and the feedback we’ve had, particularly from the U3A Third Age Matters, I think we had more than 25 people writing in about their experiences of LEO. 
DP:	But you were working on it, with it?  
NL:	Yes, I mean, we decided what we did was to select various magazines that we thought might raise interest because there might well be people who are members, say for example members of the U3A who had LEO activity and not actually members of the LEO Computers Society, and that’s how it’s happened.   
DP:	Very good.  Well, I think on that note we’ll come to an end and if you’ll excuse me for a moment, I’d just like to read this.  So this interview with Neville Lyons has been recorded by the LEO Computers Society and the society would like to thank him very much for his time and reminiscences.  The interview and the transcript form part of an oral history project to document the early use of electronic computers in business and other applications but particularly in business.  Any opinions expressed are those of the interviewee and not of the society.  The copyright of this interview recorded and its transcript remains the property of the LEO Computers Society 2022.  So, thank you very much Neville Lyons for a very interesting talk, and may I compliment you on your memory and articulateness.  It’s been very interesting talking to you and we’re all very much obliged.    
Duration 68 minutes and 57 seconds

Provenance :
Recording made by the LEO Computers Society as part of their ongoing oral history project.

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