David Winks obituary: Holland & Holland barrelmaker and director

David Winks, the Holland & Holland barrelmaker, salesman and director who became one of Britain’s leading authorities on sporting guns and rifles, has died aged 92.

From Pall Mall to the Harrow Road factory

A Londoner born into an army family in Croydon, he was moved around the country as a child during the Second World War and left school at 14, by his own account barely able to read or write. He found work sweeping floors, making tea and running errands for WW Greener in Pall Mall, and three years under the manager, Ernest Kempster, left him fascinated by guns. After National Service with REME and six months as a barrelmaker at Greener’s Birmingham works, he walked into Holland & Holland’s Harrow Road factory, overstated his abilities and negotiated three shillings an hour.

Double rifles and the Nizam’s armoury

Within five years David was foreman of the barrelmaking department, specialising in double rifles. His repair work earned the firm so much money that, unusually, he was moved from the factory to the Bruton Street gunroom as a junior salesman in the early 1970s. In 1974 he was sent to Hyderabad to value the Nizam’s armoury, where he recognised a 1799 Mortimer flintlock that completed a set the firm already held. He and Ken Prater spent 18 months restoring it.

Gunroom manager and director

On his first trip abroad, to a Los Angeles auction, he bought 10 English guns at a fraction of their value. He rose to gunroom manager and director, and clients such as the American collector Bill Feldstein trusted him to buy guns on their behalf without consulting them. He was part of the firm’s big-bore revival that produced the .700 Nitro Express, and was blown backwards firing it, only to come up grinning. He revived the short-barrelled Holland & Holland Brevis and chose the name of the Brevis Room at Bruton Street. He also contributed to a number of books on guns, among them a study of the Paradox.

“They’re buying the dream”

He never lost his Cockney accent and was as plain-spoken with Arab princes as with American tycoons, a forthright character who knew his own mind and was unforgiving of poor wood or finish. Customers came through the door asking for him by name. “They’re not buying the gun,” he told lifelong friend and colleague Nick Coggan. “They’re buying you, and they’re buying the dream.” He also told him never to forget where he came from.

David retired in 1995 but never really left. Holland & Holland and its clients continued to ring him for information, and for years he worked the London arms fair at Earl’s Court.

His wife, Maureen, died seven months before him. He is survived by his daughters, Amanda and Sarah.

“You’ve got to have it in your head, your hands and your heart,” he said of gunmaking. He had all three.