Bill Reid’s interest in weaponry was clear at an early age when he discarded his childhood toys in favour of his uncle’s Webley revolver. The pistol was, however, kept providentially unloaded whenever he showed signs of wanting to lay childish hands on it. He would go on to become one of the country’s leading authorities on the history of arms and armour, eventually becoming director of the National Army Museum.
Born in Glasgow in 1926, he was educated at Eastwood School, where he was a prefect and captain of rugby, cricket and chess. In the Air Training Corps he rose to become a sergeant and later served as a messenger for the Local Defence Volunteers, forerunners of the Home Guard, in the early years of the Second World War.
A course on astronomy at Trinity College, Oxford, was interrupted by military service. On being demobilised he returned to Glasgow, where he was articled to a firm of accountants. Lacking enthusiasm for his prospective career, he shuffled “miserable and ill-prepared” towards his examinations.
Deliverance from such a fate was at hand: a near-fatal road crash between Reid on his Triumph motorcycle and a lorryload of Cheviot sheep changed his life. In hospital, with time on his hands, he began to indulge his interest in the history of armaments, writing to experts in the UK and overseas. Once back on his feet, Reid came under the influence of Jack Scott, curator of the collection of historic arms at Glasgow Art Gallery and Museum. Scott arranged for Reid to catalogue Lord Howard de Walden’s armour collection in Kilmarnock and to write his first historical article for the Scottish Art Review.
Soon afterwards Reid was offered a job with Accles and Pollock, then the country’s leading suppliers of archery equipment. Sir James Mann, who was master of the armouries in the Tower of London, engaged him in 1956 as the most junior of the three curators on his staff. He moved from Birmingham to London, where he started extramural studies in palaeography and heraldry at London University.
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In the capital he also met his future wife, Nina Frances Brigden, at an art exhibition. They married in 1958; he described her as his “true love, wise counsellor, best friend and sternest critic”. She survives him; they had no children.
As organising secretary of the third congress of the International Association of Museums of Arms and Military History he built up a number of influential contacts and was rewarded by promotion at the armouries. From the position of senior museum assistant he became assistant keeper in 1965. That year he was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.
He was appointed director of the National Army Museum in 1970, and helped to prepare the newly constructed building (on a site that had previously formed part of the old infirmary of the Royal Hospital Chelsea) for its opening by the Queen in 1971. He held the post of director for 17 years.
Reid’s best-known book was The Lore of Arms, which sold 164,500 copies and was translated into six languages. He developed a special interest in the history of military binoculars, building up a large private collection. For some years a group of amiable eccentrics who shared his interest in vintage binocular field-glasses met occasionally in his small house, which was a five-minute drive from the National Archives. He visited antique markets and car boot sales, looking for such trifles as archers’ thumb-rings and prints of the Tower of London. He was appointed CBE in 1987.
Reid claimed his passions included “rugby football, deer-stalking and singing”, adding that for all three he revealed “more zeal than talent”, though a colleague described him as “a gifted singer of German Lieder”. Tongue in cheek, Reid said that he never visited Murrayfield without his boots or Glyndebourne without the relevant score in case his services might be required in a baritone role.
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William Reid, CBE, director of the National Army Museum, 1970-87, was born on November 8, 1926. He died on June 19, 2014, aged 87