Lord Richard Charles Percy was born on 11 February 1921 at Alnwick Castle, a younger son of the 8th Duke of Northumberland and Lady Helen Gordon Lennox.
From June 1944 he served with the Regiment's 1st (Motor) Battalion in the Guards Armoured Division as they advanced through Normandy and on into Germany – for a time acting as Air Liaison Officer at Divisional HQ.
He was regarded as an "efficient but unconventional" officer, playing the organ in every village church his Battalion liberated[5] and keeping a Hardy 'smuggler' fishing rod in his armoured car throughout the campaign.
[11] 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).
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.
He shunned publicity and resisted promotion in the university,[7] preferring instead to undertake his research from the laboratory, aquarium and photographic darkroom which he kept at his home in Northumberland.
[7] 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.