Leader armed with the experience to fight museum’s corner in tough times

DOCTOR Jonathon Riley’s distinguished military career has taken him to war zones all over the world.

Over the years he’s served in Sierra Leone, Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan, where he was Deputy Commander of Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), not to mention Northern Ireland during the height of the Troubles.

With such vast experience – he is also a military historian and author who has written and published 14 books – it probably came as little surprise that he was chosen to be the new director general and master of the Royal Armouries, when the Leeds-based post became vacant in 2009.

“I came back from Afghanistan and the day I got back Professor Richard Holmes, who was a board member and someone I’d known since I was 16, said there was a vacancy at the Royal Armouries and that I might be interested. I knew the Armouries was a great national institution and it was, frankly, irresistible, and it was worth going onto the Army reserve early to have a crack at it.”

But if it sounds like he was a shoo-in for the job, he wasn’t. “There were something like 70 applicants, it was fierce and I consider myself damn lucky to have got the post,” he says. While his return to civvy street can’t be described as a case of jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire, it’s certainly not been easy.

“It’s been a roller-coaster,” he admits. “There’s been great exhilaration to do with developments at Fort Nelson and the Tower and regenerating some of the galleries here in Leeds. On the downside there’s been dealing with the economic downturn, cuts in government funding and the sad consequences those have had for individuals and their families and the organisation as a whole.”

The Royal Armouries in Leeds has lost the equivalent of 17 full-time posts in the past two years and the organisation has had its budget slashed by £3.4m over a three-year period. It is, he concedes, a “significant” sum, especially when you take into account that its government funding is around £8.5m a year out of a turnover of just under £13m. Visitor numbers at the Armouries have also taken a hit.

“Right now, as in common with every other indoor activity across the region we are down. This is partly because of good weather over the early holiday period and I think the general economic climate has reduced people’s ability to spend on a day out, it has certainly diminished their ability to travel when you look at the price of fuel. So I think there’s a combination of factors at work, but what I do know is that people who are coming here are very happy with what they get and the money people give us in donations has actually gone up, so those who are coming are clearly having a good time.”

One of the impacts of the budget cuts has been that the Armouries no longer keeps horses on site full time and instead brings them in for shows. But although it has been a difficult couple of years, Dr Riley is optimist.

“I don’t think it diminishes what we offer, it just changes the way we deliver it. I’ve got to explain to people that if they want to come and see a horse show over the bank holiday weekend, they can come and see a horse show. Can they come and look round the galleries free of charge? Yes, of course they can. Will there be something happening on the gallery floor for them to join in? Yes, there will. We’re also ramping up our specialist seminars, our conferences and our activities for children. I think previously we could put on shows that people could watch, and we’ll still do that, but the emphasis now is much more about joining in. If people come along I think they’ll find they enjoy it just as much if not more.”

He regards the Armouries as a national institution and has no regrets about taking on the role.“I’d spent five-and-a-half years abroad in Iraq, Afghanistan and US central command so I was quite happy to come home. I bounced from one to the other so I had no time to feel sorry for myself. Do I miss the dangers and challenges of military life? Yes, of course, after that amount of time you’re bound to, but every morning I get out of bed and think to myself, ‘I’m the Master of the Armouries, how great is that’.”

Dr Riley was raised in Skipton and came from a military family, so a career in the Army always beckoned. “There was really no escape, but that said I can’t remember a time where I thought about doing anything else.” He studied geography at University College London and gained an MA in History at Leeds University, before embarking on his military career as a 20 year-old second-lieutenant.

His first operational tour was a baptism of fire, taking him to Northern Ireland in 1975, during the Troubles. “Belfast and Londonderry are completely different places now, but back then there were burned out streets, huge sectarian tension, violence and organised criminality ruling the roost. There was a police service that had effectively broken down and an army which was pretty good at keeping the peace, but had not yet quite made the jump to dealing with organised terrorism.

“Suddenly I had to take responsibility for a platoon of 40 soldiers on the front line in North Belfast and to make it worse I was the only person in the platoon who hadn’t served in Northern Ireland.”

It was the first of six operational tours in Northern Ireland and since then his career has taken him to conflicts all over the world.

“I spent a lot of time during the 90s in the Balkans and a couple of months ago I gave evidence in the Karadzic trial at The Hague which was not a pleasant experience, it brought back a lot of memories which I’d have rather kept buried. I also met Mladic when I was out there so I was very interested to see that he’d been arrested.”

Much of his military service has been carried out on the front line and during the conflict in Bosnia he was Commanding Officer, 1st Battalion The Royal Welsh Fusiliers, in Gorazde, where he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) for his bravery and conduct. He has seen friends and fellow soldiers killed during his 36-year military career, but there have also been many high points. “Being in Germany when the Berlin Wall came down, that was one, seeing the war in Sierra Leone won and the nine-year rebellion brought to an end, seeing the Dayton Peace Accord put in place in Bosnia and seeing Saddam Hussein toppled in Iraq.”

Dr Riley believes his military background has helped him with his role at the Armouries. “I didn’t come in with any expectation that I was coming here to give orders because for the previous 10 years I’d been engaged in the process of talking, negotiating, persuading and being persuaded.

“It’s not just about weapons and war, although war and struggle are part of our history and part of our culture. But our collection also reflects things like technological development, engineering and the role of armour to convey status and power.”

He is also well aware of the significance of his own role as Master of the Armouries, which has been a Crown appointment since 1327 when a man called John de Flete first took on the title. “It’s a lot to live up to. The early masters were largely concerned with equipping the forces but the heritage function began during the reign of Henry VIII and we are still in our original business.”

Of course the job spec has changed more than a little since the days of John de Flete. “Yes, all he had to do was count the arrows really,” he says.

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