1950s, Percy and Matthew Ridley travelled around East Africa and published a number of papers in natural history journals. In 1955 they were asked by the Colonial Office to investigate the exploitation of sea birds in the Seychelles (where the eggs yolks of the Sooty Tern were harvested, barrelled and exported in huge quantities for use in the food manufacturing industry). Their work entailed spending four months on an uninhabited island and caught the attention of the author, Ian Fleming, who was at that time also working on a Seychelles project and considering the islands as a backdrop for a James Bond novel. For many years Percy was chairman of the National Trust committee which managed the Farne Islands. He was also Vice-President of the Chillingham Wild Cattle Association from 1974 to 1988. Zoological work and lamprey research After the war he completed at King’s College, Durham University the Zoology degree he had begun at Oxford in 1939. King’s College became Newcastle University in 1963 and Percy became a lecturer in Zoology there for 35 years – often combining his interest in salmon and trout fishing with his work. There was a ready supply of lampreys for his aquarium in the rivers he fished for salmon. He shunned publicity and resisted promotion in the university, preferring instead to undertake his research from the laboratory, aquarium and photographic darkroom which he kept at his home in Northumberland. He conducted detailed microscopic research into the formation of red blood cells, blood circulation and the heart in lampreys. His work on this subject, much of it undertaken and co-authored with Ian Potter of Murdoch University, Western Australia, was mainly published in The Journal of the Zoological Society of London between 1975 and 1991. Family He married Sarah Jane Elizabeth Norton (born 21 October 1937, died 3 July 1978) on 10 September 1966. They had two sons. He married secondly, in December 1979, the Hon. Clayre Campbell (who had previously been married to the Hon. Nicholas Ridley, MP). Lord Richard Percy died at his home in Northumberland on 20 December 1989. References Further reading M.W. Hardisty & I.C. Potter: The Biology of Lampreys, Vols. I-IV (1971-1982) Journal of Zoology, Vols. 178, 183, 187, 193, 208, 214 & 223 Lord Richard Percy: The Post-Notochordal Tail in Dipnoi and Urodela, Transactions of the Zoological Society of London, Vol. 29 (1962) Hon. M.W.Ridley and Lord Richard Percy: