Irvine Kenneth Neville

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Biografie:
Kenneth Neville Irvine (1906-1988)
Kenneth Irvine, who died at Henley-on-Thames on 16 November 1988 aged 82, was the middle of five brothers all at Shrewsbury, most of them notable oarsmen. The one just above him in age was Sandy who, after proving himself a pillar of Shrewsbury and Oxford crews, lost his life on Everest in 1924. Kenneth himself was no mean oarsman at Magdalen in the 1920s. I have happy memories of him at school and at the Oxford of those days. I am sad that I saw less of him in later days, when my spare time went to the world of cricket and his to rowing, but no one could fail to hear of the legendary hospitality which he and his wife Phyl extended to young oarsmen at their home in Henley, particularly to young Salopians.
For many years Kenneth was a popular and trusted doctor at Henley. He had won a Travelling Fellowship to New York after Oxford and became a specialist in tuberculosis vaccine, on which he wrote a number of papers and for which he was awarded an OBE. In the Second World War he served as a Major in the RAMC in Iraq and Belgium.
Kenneth was elected a member of the AC in 1929. His record of climbs when applying for membership shows that he did many of the standard climbs in the Mont Blanc range in the mid-1920s, mostly in guideless parties led by Herbert Carr, but occasionally with such well-known guides as Joseph Knubel and Armand Charlet. In 1929 he was filming with George Finch in the Bernina.
I have one vivid memory of Kenneth in later years. Like myself, he could come only seldom to events at the Club, but we met on that memorable evening when we welcomed back the conquerors of Everest in summer 1953. He and I were standing in a corner, talking of old times, when an official of the Club brought Tenzing and Hillary to introduce to Kenneth. At this stage I modestly bowed out, and have always regretted since that I did not stay on, as a silent fourth, to listen to what must have been an historic conversation - the two men who got to the top talking with the younger brother of the man who may possibly have done so.
Rupert Martin
Quelle: Alpine Journal Volume 95, 1990-91, Seite 302


Geboren am:
1906
Gestorben am:
16.11.1988