Lionel Alistair David Leslie was born in London, a scion of the aristocratic Leslie family, with Winston Churchill being his cousin and godfather. An obituary, from which this summary is taken, was published in The Times on January 21st, 1987. He grew up at Castle Leslie in County Monaghan, Ireland, went briefly to Eton College and for a longer period to a grammar school near Kendal. After Sandhurst, in 1922, he joined the Inniskilling Fusiliers and was sent to India and Burma, whence he made the first of his three expeditions, to China. He left the army in 1926 and went to Africa, where he made an attempt to walk across the continent on his second expedition. His third adventure was in Labrador with Gino Watkins and Jamie Scott, in 1928, after which he engaged in a bit of rum smuggling off the Newfoundland coast. While in Morocco, in 1933, he decided to become a sculptor and went to Paris for four years and then back to London. In World War Two he served in France, Britain and Egypt, and he was mentioned in despatches for his work in Italy receiving escaped British prisoners-of-war back into the lines. He married Barbara Enever in 1942 and in 1946 they retired to the Island of Mull to restore a derelict inn at Grass Point. He shared an interest in searching for the Loch Ness Monster with a cousin, David Guthrie-James, who also lived on the island, at nearby Torosay Castle.