FMAM | Personalities - Friends of the Museum of Army Music

Museum Personalities

Chairman: Andy Lamb
Andy is the Curator, Bate Collection, Faculty of Music, University of Oxford. He is also active in the broader museum and musical instrument world as a member of the committee of the Galpin Society, the Church Buildings Council bell conservation committee, Trustee of the Kneller Hall Museum, secretary of the Musical Instruments Collections Subject Specialist Network and sits on a variety of Oxford University museum sub-committees.

Curator: Esther Mann MA
Esther has over fifteen years' experience of working in museums, including curating the London Fire Brigade Museum and the Massey Shaw fire boat. She is trained in Art History and Paper Conservation, and has a great deal of experience in setting up collections and the procedures involved in order to be awarded accreditation. Esther took up the appointment at Kneller Hall in Autumn 2014.

Honorary Secretary and Treasurer: Susie Welch
Susie is a civil servant and part of the Manning and Recruiting department at Kneller Hall. She was appointed to the Board of Museum Trustees in 2008, and also undertakes the role as Secretary. Formerly a military musician herself, she has a real passion for military music and her involvement is now focused towards the Friends Association to help preserve the heritage of Army music.

Editor: Colin Dean
Colin worked for thirty years as a Chartered Insurer in the life assurance and financial planning industry. Redundancy proved a blessing as he then had the massive privilege of working as Band Secretary with the Irish Guards. He retired in 2013 and is now the archivist at Kneller Hall. He is a past chairman of the International Military Music Society (UK Branch) and the author of a recent biography of Lieutenant Colonel ‘Jiggs’ Jaeger of the Irish Guards, and the centenary book for the Band of the Welsh Guards.

Andy Smith
Andy Smith FRGS FCIJ FGMS is a journalist and consultant in the heritage sector, with a longstanding interest in military music. Andy is the Editor of the quarterly journals of the International Military Music Society-UK Branch and the Victorian Military Society, and is a former Chairman of the English Music Festival

Dr. Graham Wells
Graham joined Sotheby’s in 1969 and shortly after founded their Musical Instrument Department as a separate entity. He was appointed a Director in 1977 and during his career was responsible for the cataloguing of well over 50,000 musical instruments.

He retired in 1999 but continued to act for Sotherby’s as a consultant and also as an independent consultant and valuer and has carried out the valuation of most of the major collections of musical instruments in the UK. Following his retirement he studied for and was granted the degree of DPhil. at the University of Oxford.

Since 1998 Graham has been the Chairman of the Galpin Society for the Study of Musical Instruments, the senior academic society in the field of organology.

Mike Boxall
The son of a father who started his Army career as a Band Boy and the grandson of a clarinet and bassoon teacher, Mike comes from an Army and music family. Working as an instructional designer writing computer-based training courses, his hobbies include writing and music making.

Lacking the application to become a real musician, Mike plays the B󠅩b flute in a Regimental Association Corps of Drums. He is a member of The Corps of Drums Society and The International Military Music Society and regularly contributes articles to both their Journals.