Tribute To Sir Sydney Camm - The Private Man

Elizabeth Dickson, Sir Sydney's granddaughter, gave the following address at the Memorial Service, which shows a more intimate picture of the great man.

"I was 12 when he died very suddenly on the golf course. He loved playing golf, and a quick death doing what one loves is perhaps the best way to go, but for my mother, my grandmother and I it was such a shock. We were so stunned that, looking back, it seems as though we didn't speak about it. There were obituaries, articles, a memorial service, but the family man whom we had lost, where was he?

There are others much better able than I to discuss his achievements in the public domain, so today perhaps I could share a few memories of Sydney Camm, the private man.

My early years were spent at Carradale, my grandparents' house in Thames Ditton. My parents were divorced so Grandpa was like a second father to me. When I was two and a half my mother and I moved to our new house and he often drove over after work to read my bedtime story.

Every weekend we would go out together to choose a new book, which I read in the orchard at Carradale, looking out from my perch in the apple tree to see Grandpa mowing the lawn or trying to catch me unawares with his camera.

He took lots of photos of me, my mother, the cats, grandma, my school sports day, wild flowers, the coast at Seaford and Tintagel, the test pilots at Dunsfold, his new E Type Jag. When particularly exasperated by the men at the Ministry he would drive down to Dunsfold to let off steam. He was always very concerned for his pilots' safety and they had faith in the planes they flew.

But like many photographers he was happier behind the lens than in front of it. When I passed my 11+ he took us to Paris to celebrate. We travelled on the Golden Arrow and stayed in huge rooms in a glittering hotel near the Opera; so glittering that he had to wire home for more money half way through. There is my mother by the Eiffel Tower, Grandma in the Champs Elysee, me in my bobble hat in Montmartre; but where is Grandpa?

I do have one rare photo of him; young, slim, serious in a flat cap, holding a model biplane beside my young grandmother. He had founded the Windsor Model Aero Club and a great aunt has told me how the elegant Eton mothers used to come to their house in Alma Road to ask Sydney to build gliders for their sons' birthday presents.

From selling gliders to Eton schoolboys to designing fighters that have been sold Air Forces the world over, Grandpa grew up alongside the air industry. He left school at 12 and progressed through apprenticeships and night school to become Hawkers' Chief Designer. But his public milestones were accompanied, for us, by private moments.

After the success of the Hurricane Grandma was nearly machine gunned by a German fighter swooping low over the lawn at Carradale. The bullets splintered the dining room door. Grandma dropped the tray she was carrying and said "Syd! I'm not spending another night in this house!" They moved to Claremont, where Hawkers had their drawing office, and slept on camp beds in the basement.

The Hunter's record breaking flight to Paris was marked for us by a pair of blue-bird earrings that the pilot brought back for my mother, a gift from Grandpa.

And one of my most treasured memories is the day when I approached my normally taciturn grandfather in his study and asked what he was doing. "I'm trying to design a plane that doesn't need a runway" he said, and proceeded to explain the principles of vertical take-off.

A few months, perhaps a year, later he was dead. But when I was 15 I bunked off school one day and caught the train to London. At St Pancras station I asked around till I found the goods yard where the Harrier stood like a strange bird above the London streets. In a cloud of coal dust, with a bunch of reporters, I watched as she took off on her record breaking flight to New York. I wished that Grandpa could have seen her too.