Born at Hampton, Middlesex, and educated at Hampton Grammar School, Balliol College, Oxford (BA in chemistry 1976), Warwick (Cert Ed. 1977), and. later in life Newcastlle ( Ph.D under Martin Luff 1999). Married in 1977 and taught at Crown Hills School, Leicester until 1983 when, wishing to have a more professional association with Coleoptera, he joined the Leicestershire Museums Service as a curator of collections.

At the museum Lott worked on all beetle groups and modernised the collections, introducing IT. His earliest specialisation was with the water-beetles as a member of the Balfour-Browne Club, of which he remained associated for the rest of his life and took part in many collecting trips both in Great Britain and on the Continent. Later, he was instrumental in carrying out surveys in Leicestershire and for the National Trust and the Environment Agency. But the group for which he is best known was the Staphylinidae, and in which he became internationally recognised as an expert. This family was to become his life's work and, with a particular focus on making them more accessible to other collectors, he organised identification workshops with BENHS and wrote many keys. A trip to West Africa in 2003-4 collecting in wetland sites inspired him to write a revision of the genus Acylophorus and to describe seven new species to science.

Lott's earlier publications had included Leicestershire Coleopterists: 200 years of Beetle-hunting and the Leicestershire Red Data Book. Many of his numerous later papers on staphylinidae are listed in the bibliographies of the two publications for which he is best known: the Handbooks for the Identification of British Insects: 12/5 The Staphylinidae (rove beetles) of Britain and Ireland Part 5: Scaphidiiinae, Piestinae, Oytelinae, 2009, and 12/7 (with Roy Anderson) The Staphylinidae (rove beetles) of Britain and Ireland Parts 7 & 8: Oxyporinae, Steninae, Euaesthetinae, Pseudopsinae, Paederinae, Staphylinidae, 2011.

Tony Drane and Garth Foster, writing Lott's obituary in Col., 20(2), 2011, 1012-103, (from which much of the above is taken), also recorded that apart from Coleoptera he had a great passion for the blues guitar and for wine, and that his family was central to his life.

Lott was an Honorary Member of the National Biodiversity Network Trust; served on the Council of the Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust (1993-2010), chairing it from 2011 -2009; Council of the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts; a  Director of the Aquatic Coleoptera Conservation Trust; member of the Loughborough Naturalists' Society. He was also a member of the editorial board of The Coleopterist (1993-2011). The obituary mentioned above includes a portrait, (MD 1/22)