Leslie Marr

Born in Durham, England, on the 14th August 1922, Sir Leslie Lynn Marr of Sunderland contested two Grands Prix in 1954 and 1955. However he was very well regarded as a painter, appeared in films and acted as a stunt driver plus made a documentary about reindeer migration.

His mother was a pioneering early motorist while his father had been an officer in the First World War and was the managing director of the Laing shipbuilding firm in Sunderland. His father sadly passed away when he was nine years old, and when his grandfather also died the following year, Leslie inherited the baronetcy but did not use the title.

He attended Shrewsbury school and studied engineering at Pembroke College, Cambridge, and after graduating, joined the Royal Air Force, becoming a Flight Lieutenant, Technical Branch (Radar). He served between naval and air bases in Britain and the Middle East and during this time discovered a talent for painting and, after obtaining paint and brushes in Alexandria, began to paint self-portraits using a small shaving mirror. After the War he based himself in London and attended evening classes at an art school in Pimlico and later began studying under a famous painter, David Bomberg, at the Borough Polytechnic (now London South Bank University). He eventually moved away from Bomberg and lived in a studio in London, painting in his spare time, but had discovered an affinity with speed, having bought an Aston Martin International. Cars had caught his engineering attention; as he stated “he liked to know what all the clatters and squeaks meant.”

Leslie joined the Aston Martin Owners’ Club in 1950 and began entering local club events and, along with mechanic Derrick Edwards they formed Écurie Oppidans. In 1951 he ran a 1934 Aston Martin Ulster team car and the AMOC awarded him the President’s Cup, given to the best season long performance for engines under 1.5 litres.

In 1952 he purchased a Connaught A-Type, describing at as “a beautiful piece of engineering” and also also converted a single-deck London bus to be used as a transporter, which featured a Dunlop advertisement along its side. However, he said he had totally underestimated the car and “the first time I drove it I went off at the end of the long straight at Snetterton. I was used to the Aston, which did 100mph; the Connaught did very much more. I thought, ‘Hell, I can’t stop!’ I went sideways and knocked down a small tree.” In an outing with his Aston Martin he retired at Boreham though was fifth and third at an Aston Martin Owners Club meeting at Snetterton with the Connaught. He finished tenth in the Madgwick Cup at Goodwood though retired from the Joe Fry Memorial Trophy in October and retired due to a collision in his final race at Silverstone.

Racing the Connaught A-Lea Francis in 1953 he was fourteenth in the Lavant Cup at Goodwood and sixth in an AMOC F2 race at Snetterton but did not qualify for the Daily Express International Trophy at Silverstone. In late May he entered the Coronation Trophy, an F2 race at Crystal Palace, which was the first post-war meeting at the circuit. Run over two heats and a 10 lap final, he qualified fifth in his heat. His Mother worried about him racing and would wait for his phone call after each race to reassure her he had survived it. With the race being televised by the BBC she decided to watch it at home, only to see him have the biggest accident of his career. After hitting a small barrier on the inside of the track, he recalled “wheels were flying everywhere as I disappeared into a wood.” Despite the damage, the car was repaired in time for the next race at Snetterton, just five days later, and he had a fourth place finish. He was third in the US Air Force Trophy at Snetterton and fourth at Thruxton plus had two victories at Snetterton and one at Silverstone. He was seventh in the Madgwick Cup and fourth in the Joe Fry Trophy at Castle Combe and though he retired from the Wakefield Trophy at Curragh, he took pole position (almost beating Stirling Moss’ absolute track record).

Continuing with the Connaught in 1954 he started with fifth and third in Goodwood’s Lavant Cup and Glover Trophy (behind Ken Wharton and Kenneth McAlpine). In the following month he was third (in the F2 class) at an extremely wet Aintree 200 and eleventh in the International Trophy at Silverstone. June saw him travel to Cornwall for a Cornwall MRC F1 race at Davidstow Airfield though he retired due to an accident. During the meeting, Horace Gould had retired with a blown engine and decided to leave the track in his transporter, a converted Bristol bus. However, on the way out he collided with the circuit’s footbridge, which brought it down onto the track below and, though nobody was injured, the final two races of the day had to be cancelled. He made his Grand Prix debut in July at Silverstone where he qualified twenty second (sixth of the F2 cars) and finished thirteenth and third of the F2 cars, behind Beauman and Gerard. Several weeks later, he was seventh in the Gold Cup at Oulton Park (after qualifying fifth) plus third in a Formula Libre race at the meeting and retired due to an accident at the Redex Trophy at Snetterton. September saw ninth in the Goodwood Trophy and seventh in the same meeting’s Madgwick Cup race. During the year he appeared in a feature film ‘Mask of Dust’, about a racing driver who must choose between his love for racing and his wife. Leslie had a brief cameo role as himself, alongside Stirling Moss, Reg Parnell, John Cooper, Alan Brown and Geoffrey Taylor.

After selling his Connaught A he ordered a Connaught B-type, complete with all-enveloping body and his first race in 1955 came in late May, when he travelled back to Davidstow in Cornwall. Peter Collins had entered a Maserati 250F and an Aston Martin DB3S but pulled out shortly before the event as he discovered he was competing at Crystal Palace. In what was the last race ever held there, Leslie took the victory and broke the lap record at a fraction less than 90 mph, officially stopping the watch at 1min 14sec and a speed of 89.88 mph. Entering his second British GP in July at Aintree, after qualifying nineteenth of the twenty five starters, he retired after eighteen laps due to disc brake failure. He was fifth the following month in the Daily Record Trophy at Chartherhall, having had some close battles with Jack Brabham’s Cooper, but retired from the International Gold Cup at Oulton Park due to an accident. He also drove at Shelsley and Brighton, after removing the body to compete, then later travelled down under to race in New Zealand.

He recalled “the streamliner was an eye-catcher and the organisers really wanted it” and they paid the fares for himself, Derrick and the car. Unfortunately, there were problems from the start as, besides the Connaught, Moss’s 250F, Peter Whitehead and Tony Gaze’s Ferrari 500s plus Reg Parnell’s Aston Martin DB3R were shipped to Wellington by mistake. Leslie told how “the Connaught arrived in the middle of a dock strike. Even the New Zealand PM couldn’t get it released, so Derrick went to Wellington and had just about bribed the dockers when the foreman turned up. He wanted paying too. At which point Derrick, who was tough, threatened to chuck him over the side. We got the car. The organisers promised to pay whatever expenses we accrued so we flew it up in a Bristol Freighter. But when I gave them the bill they refused to pay. I knew they were having a committee meeting the following week and told them I was coming. I flew up to Auckland, only to discover they had rescheduled it for earlier that morning. Bastards!” Despite not having practised, he finished fourth (behind Moss) then was third in the Lady Wigram Trophy. Upon arriving at Dunedin, “we were horrified to find that a section of the circuit wasn’t metalled. We explained that we hadn’t brought these expensive cars over from England to drive on dirt roads. It would damage them and/or the spectators. The response was unsympathetic, so I completed one lap to get my start money. Even so, my gearbox was leaking.” Then came a Southland Road Race at Ryal Bush, north of Invercargill. “I got pole but made a bad start and a Ferrari got ahead. I was following closely when it threw up a stone that felt like a brick when it hit my face. I got upset and tried to overtake at the next corner and finished backwards in a ditch. I should’ve won but I’m pleased I didn’t. If I had, I wouldn’t have retired and would probably have finished up dead.”

When Connaught told him he “needed a new engine that would cost £1000, and that it might last two or three races, I decided to get out. Connaught bought the car back for what I’d paid, so I did all right. I was serious about racing, but the idea was to have fun. I’d wanted to see how far I could go, and realised after New Zealand that I wasn’t going to get any better. I still had some money left; I was still in one piece… I’d always been fatalistic about my racing. I always thought I’d be all right. It was silly, I know, but how else could you approach it? Anyway, mother did all the worrying.”

After retiring from racing he briefly took up filmmaking, and was asked by a film company to do a documentary on Unilever. It won an award for Best Documentary and he later remarked in a newspaper that ‘it must have been the only entry.’ He then returned to his major passion, painting, and embarked upon various journeys over the following years, doing landscape painting trips in Britain, Spain, France, Greece and New Zealand, often in challenging weather conditions. Between 1983 and 1991, he lived and painted on remote Arran, in Scotland, before moving to his home and studio in Norfolk. He remained a professional artist well into his nineties and had many one-man shows over the years, culminating in Leslie Marr at Ninety in 2012, at the Piano Nobile gallery in London.

Leslie passed away on the 4th May, 2021 (aged 98) in Gimingham in Norfolk. Artworks by him are held in the public collections of the British Academy and many others and the Piano Nobile gallery said of him, “he belonged to a significant generation of artists that transformed the appearance of painting in post-war Britain. His genius is recorded by the work he leaves behind.”