SIR RONALD MELVILLE

Air Ministry civil servant who captained the Great Britain rifle team and rendered Lucretius into English verse

Sir Ronald Melville was chairman of the National Rifle Association, for more than a decade. A distin - guished rifle shot, he captained the Great Britain rifle team and represented Scotland for fifty years. .. ' As a civil servant he had been heavily involved with the postwar reorganisation of the Royal Air Force and the creation' of the Ministry of Defence, and from 1966 he served as Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Avia - tion . Ronald Henry Melville was born in North London, an identical twin, and was educated at Charter - house . He was awarded a Charles Oldham scholarship before taking a first in classics at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and in 1934 he went straight into the Air

Ministry, which was already pre - paring the military and civil aviation industries for a major war. Aeronautical science and technology were beginning to de - velop rapidly, and the authorities realised that the cream of the graduate recruits would be needed to apply these advances to aircraft production. Within two years he was made private secretary to the Chief of the Air Staff, becoming private secre - tary in 1940 to the Secretary of State for Air, Sir Archibald Sin - clair , for whom he developed a particular affinity. Melville's most notable achievement during the war came when he wrote the Cabinet paper which led to the