Tributes paid as leading industrialist Godfrey Bostock dies

Well-known Midland industrialist Godfrey Stafford Bostock died yesterday aged 93. He was also high sheriff, a lord of the manor and friend of the legendary Bing Crosby.

Mr Bostock was born in 1915, the son of Henry John Bostock CBE and his wife Eleanora of Radford Bank, Stafford. He was educated at Uppingham public school in Rutland and later, owing to a respiratory illness, in Switzerland.

Mr Bostock went into the family firm of Lotus Ltd, the world-famous shoe makers. He fell seriously ill in 1936 and convalesced in South Africa but was declared unfit for military service when the Second World War broke out in 1939.

Instead, he threw himself into turning the business over to war production. The engineering division of Lotus made shells, gun mountings and flamethrowers for the British Army.

In 1943 Mr Bostock was appointed a director of the company. In 1953 he became vice-chairman and joint managing director.

He retired from Lotus aged 47 in 1962. His colleagues in industry predicted it would not be a long retirement for this energetic disciple of free enterprise.

“My bet is he’ll be back in business,” said Sir Richard Powell, managing director of the Institute of Directors.

So it proved. Mr Bostock who was appointed High Sheriff of Staffordshire in 1958, was a joint founder and director of Evode Ltd, the Stafford-based adhesives firm from 1946 and was a director of other companies in the world of insurance and investment.

He was owner, with his son Nicholas, of The Economic Estate Planning Company, a small private firm specialising in advice to landed estates. He was also chairman of Keeling & Walker, manufacturers of tin oxide in Stoke-on-Trent.

In 1976 he became a member of the board of the Midland News Association, publishers of the Express & Star, as a non-executive director. He later served as a non-executive director of MNA’s parent company, The Claverley Company.

Mr Bostock was also a keen farmer, shooter and conservationist. He and his first wife Diana (known as Didie) who died in 1999, farmed the 310-acre Kennels Farm at Tixall, Stafford, breeding prize-winning Jersey cattle.

In 1966 he bought 11,000 acres of the Studley royal estate in Yorkshire. The following year he acquired parts of the Ingestre estate near Stafford.

He held the title of Lord of the Manor of Kirkby Malzeard, near Ripon, and was a member of the famous London club Boodle’s.

He was a friend of the singing legend Bing Crosby who stayed with the Bostocks at their Yorkshire home in Kirkby Malzeard during grouse-shooting holidays in the 1970s. When Bing died of a heart attack in 1977, Mr Bostock said of his old shooting partner: “He was unassuming, charming and a great gentleman in every sense of the word.”

In May 2001, at the age of 85 and widowed, Mr Bostock married Penelope, Dowager Countess of Lindsay, the 73-year-old widow of the Earl of Lindsay.

The following year Mr Bostock set a remarkable medical record. He became the oldest person – by 30 years – to have groundbreaking cancer surgery. The London-based consultant David Howard declared after the series of major operations: “Godfrey Bostock is a truly remarkable man.”

Mr Douglas Graham, chairman of the Claverley Company, said today: “Godfrey Bostock was a long time friend of my family and a highly respected, popular and effective colleague on the Claverley Company and MNA boards, renowned for his wise counsel and wide experience of business life.

“His sense of fun and good humour in the face of very serious health problems aroused the sympathy and admiration of all who knew him. He will be greatly missed.”

Godfrey Bostock leaves a widow, Penelope known as Pempé, sons Nicholas and Simon and a daughter, Olivia.