Michael Moss, who died at the age of 73 in hospital with Covid-related causes in February 2021, straddled the archival and academic worlds in numerous articles and books on archival practice, banking, insurance, medicine, shipping, shipbuilding, other industrial topics and Scotch whisky. His books were notable for their painstaking archival research in many repositories and a keen eye for business history at its best. He was a great believer in collaborative work and the majority of his works were co-authored. His history of Lord Kylsant’s Royal Mail group of shipping companies, and its ignominious end, was written with Edwin Green then archivist at the Midland Bank. He had a long-standing collaborator in Professor John R. Hume, with whom he wrote more than a dozen books. Their 1977 publication Workshop of the British Empire: Engineering and shipbuilding in the west of Scotland provided the first comprehensive overview of the industrial history of the area and laid the foundations for all subsequent industrial histories of Scotland. Their other collaborations include the history of the Belfast shipbuilders, engineers and ship repairers, Harland Wolff, and a history of the Scottish industrial behemoth, Beardmore.
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