YOUR ARTICLE IN Octane 228 about Louis Zborowski reminded me of my many-times-betrothed grandmother Helen, who was married at the time to his friend and engineer Clive Gallop. The photograph [above] shows Helen in the Hispano-Suiza you reference in your article.
I realised that I knew little about this period of her life and it has been very interesting to do some family research. Barbara ‘Helen’ Dodd married Clive Gallop in 1923, aged 18, and spent a considerable time at Zborowski’s estate at Higham Park. She knew Tom ‘Scrap’ Thistlethwaite well, whom Clive Gallop drove with at Le Mans in 1926 in a Bentley 3 Litre, and she met and remained close to Captain John (JEP) Howey, who built the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch miniature railway.
I was interested to learn that Helen became very close to Louis’ widow Violet after his untimely death in 1924, and it is suggested that their connection was romantic in nature – Violet was a
