My friend Daryll Mitchell, a businessman, who has died aged 85, dedicated much of his life to keeping the memory alive of his father, the Scottish novelist James Leslie Mitchell (1901-35), who published his most famous work, the trilogy of novels called A Scots Quair, under the pen name of Lewis Grassic Gibbon.
Daryll, known to his friends as Dal, was born less than a year before his father’s death at 34 from peritonitis. His mother, Rebecca (nee Middleton), devoted the rest of her life to promoting her husband’s work and to bringing up their two children in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, where they had settled in 1931.
He was educated at AS Neill’s liberal Summerhill school in Suffolk. He left early and did national service during the Korean war, during which he became a sergeant. Afterwards, Daryll studiously avoided reliving the horrors, including the death of his best friend by shellfire.
With his positive mindset, however, the army simply confirmed him in his determination to savour the good things in life and to respect people for themselves, irrespective of their rank.
In civilian life, Daryll put his unaffected personal charm to good use in the business world, moving from employment as a sales representative with Philips electronics and Huntley & Palmers’ biscuits to carve out his main career in the bed trade with leading companies including Vono and Slumberland. He eventually became the managing director of the luxury bed company Vispring in 1988. Daryll was gregarious but also astute, a combination that served him well.
In 1956 he married Judy Mendum, a nurse from Welwyn Garden City, and they made their home in Upchurch, Kent, and then Worcester. When Daryll retired in 1994 he and Judy settled in Tavistock, Devon, where he indulged his passion for walking with his dogs as well as enjoying holidays further afield in rural Britain and Spain. Sailing around the coastline of Devon and Cornwall also offered him a retreat from the stresses of life.
Daryll acquired a deep affection for the unspoilt countryside of his forebears, regularly revisiting his ancestral roots in Arbuthnott, Aberdeenshire, and lending support to the Grassic Gibbon centre, established there in 1993.
Following the death of his sister, Rhea, in 2014, Daryll took on the administration of the Mitchell literary estate.
He is survived by Judy, their children, Mark, Jaine and Ian, and six grandchildren.
