|
Donald Malcolm Campbell (23 March 19214 January 1967) was a British speed record breaker who broke eight absolute world speed records on water and on land in the 1950s and 1960s. He remains the only person to set both world land and water speed records in the same year (1964). ==Family and personal life== Donald Campbell was born at Canbury House, Kingston upon Thames, Surrey,〔(English Heritage Plaque for Sir Malcolm and Donald Campbell )〕〔〔 the son of Malcolm, later Sir Malcolm Campbell, holder of 13 world speed records in the 1920s and 30s in the famous ''Bluebird'' cars and boats, and his second wife, Dorothy Evelyn Whittall.〔GRO Register of Births: JUN 1921 2a 815 KINGSTON - Donald M. Campbell, mmn = Whittall〕 This background would shape Donald Campbell's entire character, and indeed his life. Campbell attended St Peter's School, Seaford and Uppingham School. At the outbreak of World War II he volunteered for the Royal Air Force, but was unable to serve because of a case of childhood rheumatic fever. He joined Briggs Motor Bodies Ltd in West Thurrock, where he became a maintenance engineer. Subsequently, he was a shareholder in a small engineering company called Kine engineering, producing machine tools. Following his father's death on New Year's Eve, 31 December 1948 and aided by Malcolm's chief engineer, Leo Villa, the younger Campbell strove to set speed records first on water and then land. He married three times: to Daphne Harvey in 1945, producing daughter Georgina (Gina) Campbell, born on 19 September 1946; to Dorothy McKegg in 1952; and to Tonia Bern in December 1958, which lasted until his death in 1967. Campbell was intensely superstitious, hating the colour green, the number thirteen, and believing nothing good ever happened on a Friday. He apparently also had some interest in the paranormal, which he nurtured as a member of the Ghost Club.〔http://www.ghostclub.org.uk/history.htm - "A Brief History" section〕 Despite being a qualified engineer, a successful businessman, a multiple record-breaker in his own right and a highly effective advocate of his own cause, Campbell was a restless man and seemed driven to emulate, if not surpass, his father's achievements. He was generally light-hearted and was generally, at least until his 1960 crash at the Bonneville salt flats, optimistic in his outlook. Behind the public façade of speed king, he was a complex character – proud and vulnerable, increasingly anxious about his place in the world. He had effectively given himself an impossible task – carrying on his father's role in an age when logic must have told him everything was against it. Campbell was a great patriot. The way he viewed it, his achievements were not for himself, but for the greater good of Britain.〔Donald Campbell: The Man Behind The Mask, David Tremayne, Bantam Press, London, 2004.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Donald Campbell」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|