A master violin maker has been recognised for 50 years of craftsmanship.

Lionel Karl Hepplewhite has been making violins, violas, cellos and double basses for the great and good of the music world since the 1950s.

In recognition of this, he was recently given the Tom Jenkins Award for Makers of Bowed Stringed Instruments.

Tom Jenkins was an internationally renowned leader of the BBC's Grand Hotel Orchestra, listened to by millions in his heyday. He was a life-long inspiration to Mr Hepplewhite, who got his first violin when he was 12. Unimpressed with its quality, he decided he would have a go at making his own.

"I was always making things," he said. "And I was given a book on violin making by my school, which helped."

He completed his first violin in 1955, aged 19. Since then, Mr Hepplewhite has made around 170 instruments. Sold for between £5,000 and £6,000, they take two to three months to complete in his tiny workshop in North End Lane.

Clients include Howard Breakspear, principal viola with Opera North, Jim Davis, leader of the BBC Northern Philarmonic and Simon Davison, cellist with the Welsh National Opera Orchestra.

Malvern's adopted son Nigel Kennedy has not made any requests so far - he owns two Stradivarius originals, valued at around £1 million each.

Mr Hepplewhite is no stranger to fame, however. In the 1992 film Howards End, starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson, he played lead violin in the orchestra.

He said: "Emma Thompson was lovely, very motherly and helpful. Anthony Hopkins was a bit more prickly though. At one point I had to try and calm him down after a scene had to be repeated nine times."

Originally from South Yorkshire, Mr Hepplewhite came to Malvern in 1970 to work for RSRE.

An accomplished violinist, he has led orchestras including the Sheffield University Orchestra, the Silurian Consort and the Chandos Symphony Orchestra.

Some of his instruments are on show until Wednesday (April 27), alongside his sister Val's paintings, at the New Gallery, at the Royal West of England Academy of Art in Bristol.