HE’S an internationally-renowned wood and stone carver whose work can be seen at Windsor Castle, Westminster Abbey and on the Princess Diana memorial at Althorp House. But Dick Reid became a craftsman quite by accident - and largely because he didn’t want to play football.

That was odd for a boy growing up in Newcastle just after the war, he admits. But instead of playing for his school team, he preferred spending Saturdays with a delivery crew from the Co-op, learning to drive in their three-ton Bedford truck.

He’d drive while the men dropped off their deliveries, he says. The men were happy. “They could deliver the milk more quickly, so they had a longer coffee break!”

But his school didn’t appreciate his absence from the football ground. They gave him extra work as punishment, and he found himself in the school’s art rooms, making stage scenery for school productions.

His work was spotted by the wood carver and sculptor Roger Hedley, who promptly took him on, aged 15, as an apprentice.

The young Dick trained as a wood and stone carver. He joined the army in 1955 to do National Service, arriving at Imphal Barracks in York for his training. And when he left the army, he returned to York to set up a studio.

During an illustrious career he spent five years as a superintendent to the Royal Household during the restoration of Windsor Castle; supervised a team carving six marble chimneys for Spencer House in London (one chimney alone took 8,000 man-hours of work) and worked on nine memorials for Westminster Abbey - the first for Richard Dimbleby, the last for Sir John Betjeman.

But what he’s most proud of, he says, is helping keep the crafts of stone- and wood-carving alive, by training the next generation. “There are some young carvers now doing excellent work.”

Next week he’ll be at Bedern Hall as the guest of the Company of Cordwainers of York to give an illustrated talk about his life and work. ‘Carving and chiselling a life,’ he has called it. Expect a few great anecdotes...

* Dick Reid, Bedern Hall, Thursday June 8 at 7pm. Tickets £10 from Elizabeth Marshall on 01904 704589.