OBITUARY
Major General Michael Tillotson obituary
Yorkshire soldier who wrote Field Marshal Lord Bramall’s authorised biography and was the Times military obituarist for 30 years
Tillotson in Ireland in 1986, when (honorary) colonel of the Prince of Wales’s Own Regiment of Yorkshire
Micky Tillotson liked to say that it was writing obituaries for The Times that kept him alive. For 30 years he recorded the exploits of generals and spies, as well as those in more junior ranks who had won medals for bravery, giving up only two years ago at the age of 93, when his eyesight began to fail.
His phenomenal memory and filing cabinet of a mind, as well as his actual physical files, bulged with biographical and historical detail, garnered from prodigious correspondence and love of military “gossip”. As both a seasoned field soldier and a staff officer with a capacity for taking pains, his obituaries, both well informed and well judged, were almost invariably well received.
Henry Michael (Micky) Tillotson was born