John Yonge
JOHN Yonge, proprietor of the Quail Map Company, died in a nursing home in January aged 89.
Born in Chester, John was the son of Wing Commander John Yonge, a Second World War pilot, and led a somewhat disrupted childhood because of his father’s various RAF postings in the UK and overseas.
After leaving boarding school, which he hated, John worked for London Transport. In his spare time he qualified as a cartographer and during an extended stay in New Zealand set up the Quail Map Company. He took on the ambitious task of mapping railway systems throughout the world and very successfully sold many of these by mail order.
Knowing his brother Mark was about to visit Russia on a business trip, John asked him to take some large, detailed railway maps of the Soviet Union to drum up sales. A visit to a leading map shop in Moscow generated much praise and interest but, unsurprisingly, no orders.The shop manager was given several free maps, with the message to pass these on to the relevant authorities. On his return to the UK, Mark advised John‘that he shouldn’t hold his breath’. Astonishingly, after several months a huge purchase order arrived, which forced John to produce Soviet maps on an almost industrial scale.