[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9] He served as Hill Farming Convenor of the National Farmers' Union of Scotland (NFU), Chairman of the Deer Commission for Scotland, Convenor of the Scottish Landowners Federation, County Chairman of the Cumbrian NFU, and an appointed member of the Lake District Special Planning Board.
[2] He and his wife turned Muncaster Castle into a popular tourist attraction visited by over 90,000 people a year.
[10][11] After the Chernobyl disaster, he wrote to Mikhail Gorbachev to complain about the radioactive dust that had collected on the Cumbrian Fells.
His letter was initially refused by the Russian Embassy as they did not believe his name was real on account of its length.
Eventually the embassy did accept his letter and he became an active leader of the British-Soviet Friendship Society.