Maestros and their motor cars (22): The King’s composer was done for speeding

Hubert Parry, favourite composer of King Charles, was a passionate, if incautious, motorist who drove a Panhard.

His biographer writes:
‘The most lurid account of Parry’s rashness as a motorist is given by a member of his family. He drove down the steep and winding road which leads from Savernake Forest into Marlborough at such a pace that when they reached the, bottom the chauffeur got out and was sick! There is also the story of his stopping on the road into Gloucester to take up an old woman, burdened with baskets, on the way to the market. “When they arrived she was so overcome by the speed of her transit that she had to be given restoratives. The allegation that, after acquiescing in the imposition of fines on motorists for exceeding the speed limit by his fellow-magistrates on the Gloucester bench, he was in the habit of paying the fines himself cannot be verified but is intrinsically probable.’