LETTERS
OR LETTERS Motorsport: A Family Tradition
The Mortimer family is one steeped in transport history. My father Charles Knight Mortimer (1927, D) attended Radley at the turn of the last century and, although the family had no motoring history, this is a profession that he chose to pursue. In the early 1930s motor racing had already been going for over twenty years and as the family lived in Dorking, only a short distance from the Brooklands racing track, my father decided that Brooklands was where he needed to be. He rented a small workshop at the track and very soon had bought himself his first racing motorcycle, a 175cc Fernihough-Jap, with which he started his two-wheel career. This was, in fact, a very uncompetitive motorcycle and was the last belt driven bike ever raced at Brooklands. He soon progressed to Norton, AJS, and Brough Superior motorcycles, gaining the coveted Gold Star awards given to any rider that could lap the banked outer circuit at over 100mph average, which he achieved on both 500cc and 1000cc machines. In late 1937, my father decided that he had gone as far as he could go on motorcycles at Brooklands and started racing cars until the outbreak of war in 1939 curtailed his activities. Brooklands was the headquarters of the aeroplane makers Vickers-Armstrong and, in the immediate pre-war era, this was where he met my mother Jean Mary Summers, 10 years his junior. Her father, my maternal grandfather, was Capt. Joseph ‘Mutt’ Summers, the famous chief test pilot for Vickers. He had done the first flight of the world-renowned Spitfire aeroplane from Southampton in 1935. Mutt was also great friends with Barnes Wallis of the Bouncing Bomb fame and, during WW2, it was Mutt who did all the test flights with the early prototype bombs, dropping them from a Wellington bomber at Chesil in Dorset. Mutt is portrayed in the Dam Busters movie by actor Patrick Barr (himself an OR, 1922, C*). After the war my grandfather continued his career in aviation and performed the first flights of the Vickers Viscount and Valiant commercial aircraft amongst others and was awarded the CBE for his work in aviation. He is also in the Guinness Book of Records as the pilot achieving a record 54 first flights. Both Mum and Dad raced cars in the early 1950s, so one of my earliest memories is sitting on a pit counter and watching them racing at Goodwood. Therefore, it was inevitable that when I left school I would take up racing which I did shortly after my 16th birthday in 1965. Fortunately, I had a natural talent for the sport which I had inherited from my parents and by 1969 I was British Champion in the 125cc class. In 1970 I committed to a full season of world championship racing riding 250cc and 350cc privately entered Yamahas and was picked up by the Yamaha factory in 1971. My first Isle of Man TT win came that same year followed by a further seven wins on the Island over the next decade. Although I failed to win a world championship, I was fortunate enough to finish runner up in the 125cc class in 1972 and was classified 3rd in the 125cc and 350cc classes in 1973 and 1976. I am also lucky enough to be in the Guinness Book of Records as the only rider
ever to have won races counting towards the world championship in the 125cc, 250cc, 350cc, 500cc and 750cc categories, a record never to be beaten as the Moto GP World Championship only has three classes in the modern era. My father passed away in 1996 aged 83 having written five books on motoring, motor racing, motorcycle racing, motor yachting and book collecting. I retired from racing after 15 years in 1980, and built up the biggest specialist motorcycle transport businesses in the UK which I sold three years ago. My retirement years have seen me return to my real passion in life and I am now putting back into the sport that has offered me such a great life. I currently run a motorcycle racing school for children aged 8-14 (including, coincidently, the son of a Radley staff member) in the UK and Spain, alongside a modern semi-retired racing professional Danny Webb. * For more about actor Patrick Barr, see p.42 Chas Mortimer, son of Charles Knight Mortimer (1927, D)
Wartime Radley
I have been invited by the editor to write a short account of Radley in Wartime. My main memory is that Radley just went on as usual, as a pretty self-contained community. That is true, as a school has a regular timetable pattern of lessons, games, mealtimes and, in Radley’s case, Chapel. What changed was the world around it. In 1939, when I joined, Great Britain was the unchallenged major power in the world. We ran an Empire covering some 40% of the world’s population and had no great competitors. Germany had been disarmed after WWI, Russia had had a revolution and lost a small war with Finland, America had retreated into isolation, and France had not fully recovered from occupation in WWI, and was divided politically. While Germany under Hitler had broken many of the 1919 peace settlement rules, very few people realised the extent of their ambitions and powers. The first six months of the war was called the ‘phoney war’ and the joint power of Britain and France was expected to lead to a re-run of 1914. All this was cruelly shattered in 1940, when Britain found herself isolated and without allies to face Germany, which had been joined by Italy and had formed an alliance with Russia. Britain was alone, but with its highly supportive Empire. Clearly, many Radleians would be required to join in battle, and Eastbourne College was evacuated from the Channel coast to Radley. Curiously, this had little effect on Radley and the only obvious effect was their occupation of Smale’s Social (H) and some alterations to meal and class times. Lessons were not shared and they were seen by us juniors as a different tribe, although they came from a similar social background. We called them the Bogs. The OTC (CCF) became more important and we all soon knew how to take a Sten gun to bits and reassemble it. Dickie Waye was the CO and ran it very well. Senior boys joined the Home Guard and Radley came onto a wartime footing. But the essentials did not alter. We still had cold baths and early morning school before breakfast, and corporal punishment continued. I am afraid I felt myself a little sissy as I was never the old radleian 2023
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