Gurth Hoyer Millar

"Gurth Hoyer Millar, who has died aged 84, was a Scottish rugby international, Special Forces officer, serial Liberal parliamentary candidate, a director of Sainsbury’s, and chairman of Bonhams auction house.


A lawyer by training, Hoyer Millar began his business career at BP, where he specialised in property matters. In 1967 he joined J Sainsbury to become one of its first non-family board members and to take charge first of distribution and then of a growing real estate portfolio — as the number and size of its supermarkets expanded rapidly under the dynamic chairmanship of John Sainsbury (Lord Sainsbury of Preston Candover).


Hoyer Millar’s manner was gentle, engaging and imbued with concern for the well-being of others; but his record as a soldier and sportsman spoke of an inner toughness that was also sometimes called upon in business dealings. In 1978 he challenged Peter Shore, Labour’s Environment Secretary, over a series of refusals to grant planning permission for larger supermarkets; later he resisted the blandishments of Robert Maxwell when the publishing tycoon tried to entice Sainsbury’s pension fund into complex property and share dealings.


At the beginning of the Thatcher era, Hoyer Millar and his colleagues spotted rising consumer enthusiasm for home improvement, and established a joint venture with a Belgian retailer which had already built a domestic DIY chain. The result was Homebase, of which he was the first chairman: pioneered in Croydon and Leeds in 1981, the new superstore chain offered everything necessary to occupy the weekends of the middle classes who fancied themselves handy with power-drill and wallpaper brush.


The underlying social change was the idea of DIY as a pastime rather than a chore: “Holidays in Bermuda are at the top end of the leisure market, we are at the bottom,” Hoyer Millar told an interviewer. “Most people can afford to pretty up the house or garden, even if they can’t afford to go away.”


Gurth Christian Hoyer Millar was born in Chelsea on December 13 1929 into a family with Perthshire roots. His father, uncle and grandfather had served or were serving as officers in the Black Watch; his aunt Dame Elizabeth rose to be director of the WRNS; and his cousin Derick, the first Lord Inchyra, was a post-war ambassador to Germany and head of the Diplomatic Service.


While his father was fighting with Tito’s partisans in Yugoslavia, Gurth was at Harrow, where he lodged with his housemaster and never knew who paid his fees. As head of school he was host for a day to the most famous of old boys, Winston Churchill; he was also captain of cricket for two years, and achieved the rare accolade of “triple blood” — first-team colours in three major sports — in three consecutive years.
He won an exhibition to Lincoln College, Oxford, to read Law but was called for National Service and saw action as a lieutenant with Special Forces in the Malayan Emergency, in what became the Malay Scouts (SAS) Squadron, fighting communist bandits in the jungle while also being called on from time to time to box and play cricket for the regular Army in Kuala Lumpur."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/10780550/Gurth-Hoyer-Millar-obituary.html