Tim Birkin

Sir Henry Ralph Stanley "Tim" Birkin, 3rd Baronet (26 July 1896 – 22 June 1933) was a British racing driver, one of the " Bentley Boys" of the 1920s.

Background and family

Birkin was born into a wealthy Nottingham family in 1896, the son of Sir Thomas Stanley Birkin, 2nd Baronet, and the Hon. Margaret Diana Hopetoun Chetwynd. In childhood, Henry Birkin gained the nickname "Tim", after the children's comic book character Tiger Tim, created by Julius Stafford Baker, who was extremely popular at the time. It was his nickname for the rest of his life.

Birkin married Audrey Clara Lilian Latham, daughter of Sir Thomas Paul Latham, 1st Baronet, and Florence Clara Walley, on 12 July 1921; they divorced in 1928. He and Audrey had two daughters, Pamela and Sara, both of whom married and had issue. The elder daughter Pamela (d. 1983) married two Buxton cousins in succession, and her second husband was the Life Peer Baron Buxton of Alsa, KCVO, MC. She had seven children including wildlife film-maker Cindy Buxton. The younger daughter Sara (d. 1976) married twice, and had two sons by her first husband.

At his death in 1933, without sons of his own, he was succeeded by his next surviving male relative, his paternal uncle Sir Alexander Russell Birkin, 4th Baronet (died 1942). His younger brother, Archie Birkin, was killed during practice for the 1927 Isle of Man TT motorcycle races.

Military career

Birkin joined the Royal Flying Corps during World War I and gained the rank of Lieutenant in the service of the 108th (Norfolk and Suffolk Yeomanry) Field Brigade, serving in Palestine where he contracted malaria, a disease from which he would suffer for the rest of his life.

Racing career

In 1921 Birkin turned to motor racing, competing in a few races at Brooklands. Business and family pressures then forced him to retire from the tracks until 1927 when he entered a three-litre Bentley for a six-hour race. For 1928 he acquired a 4½ litre car and after some good results decided to return to motor racing, very much against his family's wishes. Soon Birkin, racing with a blue and white spotted silk scarf around his neck, would be a familiar sight on the race tracks driving with the works team (the "Bentley Boys"). In 1928 Birkin entered the Le Mans race again, leading the first twenty laps until a jammed wheel forced him to drop back, finishing fifth with co-driver Jean Chassagne who heroically rescued the abandoned, damaged car, winning the hearts of the crowds; Chassagne received a trophy from W O Bentley in recognition of this extraordinary feat.

The next year Birkin was back as winner, racing the " Speed Six" as co-driver to Woolf Barnato. If Bentley wanted a more powerful car he developed a bigger model and the Speed Six was a huge car. Ettore Bugatti once referred to the Bentley as "''the world's fastest lorry''" ("Le camion plus vite du monde"). Back in 1928 however, Birkin had come to the conclusion that the future lay in getting more power from a lighter model by fitting a supercharger to the 4½ litre Bentley. When Bentley Motors refused to create the supercharged model Birkin sought he determined to develop it himself. With technical help from Clive Gallop and supercharger specialist Amherst Villiers, and with Dorothy Paget financing the project after his own money had run out, Birkin rebuilt the car at the engineering works he had set up for the purpose at Welwyn Garden City in Hertfordshire. Adding a huge Roots-type supercharger ("blower") in front of the radiator driven straight from the crankshaft gave the car a unique appearance. The 242 bhp " blower Bentley" was born.

The first car, a stripped down Brooklands racer known as Bentley Blower No.1, first appeared at the Essex six-hour race at Brooklands on 29 June 1929. However, the car initially proved to be very unreliable. W.O. Bentley himself had never accepted the blower Bentley. Nevertheless, with Woolf Barnato's support, Birkin persuaded "W.O." to produce the fifty supercharged cars necessary for the model to be accepted for the Le Mans twenty-four-hour race. In addition to these production cars built by Bentley Motors, Birkin put together a racing team of four remodelled "prototypes" (three road cars for Le Mans and Blower No.1) and assembled a fifth car from spare parts. Birkin's blower Bentleys were too late for Le Mans in 1929 and only two of the cars reached the start line in 1930. After an epic duel between Dudley Benjafield and Birkin's privately entered blower Bentleys and Rudolf Caracciola's Mercedes SSK all three retired, leaving the victory to the Bentley works team Speed Six of Barnato and Glen Kidston. Birkin's courage and fearless driving, in particular his selflessly harrying Caracciola into submission, are regarded as embodying the true spirit of the Vintage Racing era.

Back in 1925 the energetic motor sports enthusiast Eugène Azemar

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