‘A wonderful teacher’: hotelier Michael Leonard dies

Michael Leonard, who was hotel manager of Inverlochy Castle near Fort William for 27 years, has died.

Originally from the small village of Cliffoney in County Sligo, Ireland, Leonard was the son of a farmer and the eldest of four children. His mother, Ellen, wanted him to become a Catholic priest, but neither this nor farming had appealed to him.

So in 1961, he moved to the UK, having caught the bug for hospitality while working at local hotels during his school days. He started his career with a management training contract at Trusthouse Forte.

After spending his first few years in England and Wales, he then moved to continental Europe, where he spent some time in France, Germany and Switzerland. A brief encounter with the French Gendarmerie during the student riots in Paris in 1968 nearly saw him drafted to Vietnam.

Upon his return to England, he was made head waiter at the RAC Club in London’s Pall Mall. After that, he moved to the Quorn Country Club in Leicestershire as head waiter, where he met his first wife, Muriel.

In 1975, he was believed to have been “poached” by the Inverlochy’s then owners, Joseph and Grete Hobbs, The Caterer’s first female Hotelier of the Year, and in 1977, he and Muriel welcomed their first daughter, Abigail.

He remained at the Fort William hotel until 2001. During his tenure, the property became the first Scottish country house hotel to enter Relais & Chateaux and achieved a Michelin star restaurant.

In his free time, he enjoyed fishing and reading about the history of World War II, which he considered to be essential knowledge.

Leonard retired to the Highland town of Beauly in 2002 with his second wife, Dodi, and is survived by his daughter Abigail Montgomery.

At the time of his retirement, Douglas Jack, who had worked with Leonard for nine years at Inverlochy, said: “Anyone who has had the pleasure of working with him will acknowledge his relentless drive towards standards and ensuring his guests return. I think it is quite remarkable that the same person can have been in charge of one of Scotland’s premier country house hotels and kept it at that sort of standard for that length of time.”

Montgomery added: “My dad was not one for ‘blowing his trumpet’, nor was he a man to boast about awards for the prestige of Inverlochy. He was a wonderful teacher and his attention to detail in the hotel was second to none.

“I also worked at Inverlochy with him for five years after university. He was a wonderful father and also taught me to fish and my husband a lot about boats. I have had a lot of messages from people who he trained over the years also commenting on what a true gentleman he was.”