Murray SMITH (1956) A PROVIDENTIAL VISIT TO THE HEAD’S OFFICE

I clearly recall getting a summons to visit Mr Wilkinson’s Office quite early one morning, so I begged leave from Captain Tom Stewart (who was struggling to lead me through algebra at that time), and made my way up the long main corridor to the Assembly Hall, where the Head’s office was then situated. I knocked on the door quite unaware at the time of the reason for the meeting.

I should explain that my father, Tom Smith, had recently passed away at the tender age of 46 and that to honour his far too early departure, I had contributed a story to the school magazine about someone he knew and respected: a Siamese Aviator and Racing Motorist called Prince Birabongse with whom my father had played golf.

One of the School’s Directors, Mr Townsend, had seen my story about Bira and some of the cars he had driven, and left a message with the Head to say that, if the student who had written it, would like to join him and a group of his friends, he would be delighted to invite him to watch the Daily Express International Trophy at Silverstone in which Bira would undoubtedly be participating.

On the day, I was instructed to be at the King Street gate at 8 am and to bring a raincoat just in case. Promptly, a late twenties Rolls Royce Woody Station Wagon pulled up and I squeezed in, and it was a certainly a squeeze, as Mr Townsend had invited four of his auto-motivated pals plus copious hampers of sandwiches and what looked suspiciously like a crate of champagne to provide sustenance in the wilds of Northamptonshire!

And we were off! I was excited to see a full programme of racing with some of the most famous drivers in the world. Not only would I get to see Bira who, to my delight had entered his OSCA into the race, but also Fangio, Farina, Rosier, Behra, and Parnell; a young Stirling Moss would also appear in one of the support events!

We parked the Woody on the outside of the entry to Woodcote corner (where, incidentally, many years later, I took my wife to her first race and the noise really hadn’t changed!).

I was electrified and enthused; I had read about these cars and their drivers but here I was actually present and watching it all from a lovely old Woody Rolls, and it was even more exciting than I had anticipated. My love of racing was well and truly alight! But I had to go back to school on Monday.

Fortunately, I lived near the Isleworth factory of Frazer Nash cars who built very competitive sports cars with

Bristol engines, and by looking in the windows of the showrooms on a regular basis, I got know the works manager who convinced the owners, the Aldington brothers, that I was harmless. As a result, I got taken for test rides!

I later owned one of these Frazer Nashes and drove it at Monaco where it had once finished third in the hands of a previous owner. I didn’t do so well in it; it broke down at a corner where I found two other drivers also stranded by mechanical woes: Phil Hill and Stirling Moss who much later became great personal friends. In fact, I shared my Bentley with Phil Hill on the re-enactment of the Mille Miglia, a thousand-mile saga around Italy, where Stirling gave one of the greatest performances of his career.

I digress! Once I finished my career at Latymer and got into the London School of Economics, I bought my first car, an Austin Ten open two-seater with a dicky seat, and got a part time job at an emporium called Performance Cars on what was then the Great West Road. I made myself as useful as possible, making enough money to indulge in a number of rare Austin Sevens, amongst them an Ulster and a Vauxhall 30/98.

My days at the LSE prepared me for a career with a well-known British Advertising Agency, who, after a year in London, sent me to Greece where I bluffed my way into several nice drives in other people’s cars and in a real international event, the Acropolis Rally, which was a bona fide, world championship event! I competed in this rally four times before eventually winning our class in 1965 with a very good co-driver called George Raptopoulos. We also did another world championship event in Poland and ended up in a river bed near Zakopane!

I was eventually transferred to Paris for a year, before going on to join a big agency in New York where I