William Keith Neal

In 1950 he moved to Bishopstrow House, an imposing Regency house near Warminster, Wiltshire, which was to be his home until he settled in Guernsey in 1976. Bishopstrow provided a backdrop to the largest and most important collection of British and European guns in private hands. It was also the centre of learning where a series of standard reference works mainly on British firearms were produced, nearly all in collaboration with his friend David Henry Lempriere Back, which are now regarded as the definitive on their subject. He was also an expert on railway telegraph insulators (on which he also wrote two books), steam engines, and vintage Bentley motor cars.

In December 1947 Keith Neal married Jane Erskine-Murray. They had one daughter, Diana Margaret Jane.

By 1937, the date of the International Hunting Exhibition in Berlin, he was already an established expert. His contribution to the prize-winning British Section of the exhibition was rewarded by a medal presented by Hermann Göring, who had performed the opening ceremony. At the British Sporting Exhibition held at the Imperial Institute, London, in January 1938, he organised a display showing the development of firearms over three hundred years. His own collection was sufficiently extensive to provide sixty-two of the weapons which he was on hand to demonstrate. It was the largest exhibition of antique firearms ever held in London, and included a drop-down breech-action rifle from 1660 as well as guns made by Joseph Manton, all in working order.

Keith Neal spent his early career working for the distinguished Bath portrait photographer Herbert Lambert. During these years his collection grew steadily, limited only by his financial resources. His work as a photographer's apprentice also "gave him access to the great gun collections of the region's stately homes" and "often he came away with gifts of firearms from aristocrats moved by his enthusiasm for their gun cabinets." In 1930 he began reassembling the Packington Old Hall gun cabinet originally collected by Lord Guernsey. This unique collection of obsolete long arms, which had been preserved in deer grease, dated from 1725 to 1795, and become the nucleus of his "unrivalled" group of English sporting guns, and indeed his whole collection. He acquired the first piece – a flintlock sporting rifle, made by John Fox Twigg (1732–1792) – for £1.15s from gun dealer Frank Russell. By 1933, his collection was already being recognised as "one of the most complete collections of English weapons" in private hands.

William Keith Neal (11 November 1905 – 10 April 1990) was an English writer, collector and enthusiast who amassed what is considered to be one of the greatest private collections of antique firearms ever assembled. During his lifetime he was regarded as the leading authority on antique firearms in Britain and co-authored "the standard reference work" on the history of British gunmaking between the 16th and late 19th centuries. A Past Master of the Worshipful Company of Gunmakers, his collection of around 2,000 firearms included six items "from the gun cabinet of Louis XIII" and two miniature, gold-inlaid pistols that were reportedly "the last gift Napoléon Bonaparte gave to his three-year-old son before military defeat and subsequent exile."