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• George Daniels (Master...
English watch-maker George Daniels (1926-2011) was most famous for creating the co-axial escarpment and could make a complete watch by hand. In his lifetime, he received many awards, including the rarely-given Gold Medal of the Clockmakers' Company of London. [Listener: Roger Smith; date recorded: 2003]
TRANSCRIPT: So the Itala is added to my stable now, and then having sold the team Blower Bentley, I was looking for something lighter for racing, and what should happen but Gregor Fiskens dealers in London advertised for sale Birkin's 1932 Le Mans Alfa Romeo and I enquired about this and it was Birkin's car and is now in a coupe body. It had been given to Campari by the works in 1932 in lieu of wages. So they obviously hadn't any money, they'd race their cars and got no money to pay the wages so they gave him the car, and he had it converted into a coupe and sold it to Italo Balbo. Italo Balbo was the air marshal of Italy and a very famous man and a very powerful man, second only to Mussolini, and he bought the car and kept it for a few years. He drove it all round making speeches, political speeches sitting on the hood at the back and he was a most extraordinary man because he used to fly squadrons of seaplanes in 1930 from Italy to America. I mean you wouldn't think it was possible to do such a thing. I suppose he must have gone to Canada and fuelled up and then turned half left and come back down to America, but a most extraordinary thing to do. You would think twice doing it now. You know even now they're only just filling up planes with fuel, aren't they, and getting to the Falklands, and there Balbo was doing that all those years ago.
Anyhow Balbo was too popular with the people and too good for Mussolini and the upshot was that bringing back his squadron one evening, he always landed last, and he was shot out of the sky by his own gunners, upon Mussolini's orders. And so the car came to England and it's been in England ever since until I bought it in 1970, still with its coupe body on it... and the man that had it didn't know its history. So he put it up for auction and it was bought by Gregor Fisken, who did know its history, and he made me pay for it. I wanted that car, it was a Birkin car, and I got these Birkin cars and he was the greatest, so I wanted that car. Well, I finished up owning it... I had to buy it... and racing that, it was a wonderful car for racing. It's lightweight, very fast, 130 miles an hour and altogether a most charming and delightful motorcar and it fulfils all my current needs for a sports racing car.