I am not quite sure when I became old, but I think I must date it in my seventies when I retired from a variety of activities and settled into a more sedentary style of life. I retired from Dowty Rotol and Bergers (and so Hoechst UK) in 1975, from the Royal Institution in 1976, from Ricardo’s and British Printing Corporation in 1977 and sold Withers Estates, very profitably for the Withers family, in 1981.

I was left with the chairmanships of two tiny companies, Land-speed and Cotswold Research. While Landspeed has not served its purpose, Cotswold Research has its place in history. Both companies are concerned with the inventions of Professor Eric Laithwaite, who demonstrated in model and prototype form tracked hovercraft powered by the linear motor. Landspeed failed to develop this, through lack of funds, to a commercially viable transport system, though the Japanese appear to have done so. Cotswold Research, however, made a success of an adaptation of the linear motors to the separation of aluminium from scrap material and for their work, which ended in profitable industrial apparatus and a big saving in manpower, Mr A.P. Bird and I received the Prince of Wales Award in 1986.

When I look back, as I occasionally do, on the pattern of my long life, I see it dominated by three great projects — the design and construction of the airship R101, the development of the jet propulsion gas turbine, and Cranfield University. These are, so to speak, the high hills in a plain of diversified scenery.

Of these great projects, I have included essays on R101 and on Cranfield, but I have confined my reference to the jet propulsion story to my opinion, long ago first expressed, of a great man, Frank Whittle. I have not expressed myself at any length on the controversies which mar the Whittle story and those who are interested — and who is not? — should read Whittle’s own book Jet and Mr Folley’s biography. Of the two men who I believe had the greatest influence on my career, Sir Henry Tizard and Sir Harry Jephcott, I will have something to say later on.

We, his family and friends, are gathered here today in the heart of London to remember and to give thanks for the life and work of one of the truly great men of our time — the Lord Kings Norton of Wotton Underwood, ‘Roxbee’ to the legion of his friends and colleagues.

Through the many years of his active life, there were hardly any avenues of the aeronautical sciences to which he had not made (and enjoyed the making of) inspired contributions.

He was, indeed, “A Happy Warrior”.

If the question was to be asked — “What, among all Lord Kings Norton’s many achievements, were those most to be acclaimed?”, the answer, among such a galaxy, could, perhaps, be four.