Everything about Malcolm Campbell totally explained
Sir Malcolm Campbell (
11 March 1885 –
31 December 1948) was an
English racing motorist and motoring journalist. He gained the world speed record on
land and on
water at various times during the 1920s and 1930s using . His son,
Donald Campbell, was killed in 1967, attempting to repeat his achievements.
Early life
Malcolm Campbell was born in
Chislehurst,
Kent in 1885., the only son of a
Hatton Garden diamond seller. He attended the independent
Uppingham School. In Germany, learning the diamond trade, he gained an interest in motorbikes and races. Returning to England, he worked for two years at
Lloyd's of London for no pay, then for another year at one pound a week. Between 1906-8, he won all three London to Lakes End Trials (motorbike races). In 1910 he began racing cars at
Brooklands. He married but divorced two years later. He christened his car
Bluebird, painting it blue, after seeing the play
The Blue Bird by
Maurice Maeterlinck at the
Haymarket Theatre . He remarried to Dorothy Evelyn Whittall in 1920 in Westminster and his son Donald was born in 1921, and he'd a daughter Jean in 1923. They divorced in 1940. He served in
World War Two in the
Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment. He married Betty Nicory in 1945 in Chelsea. He was knighted in 1931.
Grand Prix career
He competed in
Grand Prix motor racing, winning the 1927 and 1928
Grand Prix de Boulogne in
France driving a
Bugatti T39A.
Land speed record
He broke the LSR for the first time in 1924 at 146.16mph at
Pendine Sands near
Carmarthen Bay in a
350HP V12 Sunbeam. Malcolm broke nine
land speed records between 1924 and 1935, with three at
Pendine Sands and five at
Daytona Beach. His first two records were driving a racing car manufactured by the
Sunbeam Car Company in Wolverhampton.
He set his final land speed record at the
Bonneville Salt Flats in
Utah on
September 3,
1935, and was the first person to drive an
automobile over 300
miles per hour (301.337 mph).
Water speed records
He set the
water speed record four times. His highest speed was 141.740 mph in the
Bluebird K4. He set the record on August 19, 1939 on
Coniston Water in Great Britain.
Death
He died after a long illness in 1948 in
Reigate,
Surrey, aged 63 years. He was one of the few land speed record holders of his era to die of natural causes, as so many had died in crashes. His versatile racing on different vehicles made him internationally famous.
His son Donald died 19 years later in an attempt to break the water speed record.
Awards
Miscellaneous
He was a Vice President of the
Middlesex County Automobile Club.
He became interested in the search for buried treasure in the
Cocos Islands.
Campbell was also involved in politics. He stood for Parliament without success at the
1935 general election in
Deptford for the
Conservative Party.
Campbell was depicted by
Robert Hardy in a BBC dramatisation of the attempt on the land speed record with Bluebird II.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Malcolm Campbell'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://malcolm_campbell.totallyexplained.com">Malcolm Campbell Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
