Norman Graham Hill was born in 1929 and during his formative years he showed little interest in automobiles until he passed his driving test at the age of 24. One year later he paid a few shillings to drive a few laps around a race circuit and enjoyed the experience enough to enter a race. 
By the age of 48 he had established himself as one of the foremost drivers of his era having won two F1 World Drivers Championships, the Le Mans 24-Hours as well as the Indianapolis 500 and had created his own F1 team. His 17-year race career was built on tenacity and a dedicated will to succeed; he worked initially in engineering before carrying out active service in the Royal Navy. This was followed by a spell at Smiths Instruments but he thought his engineering skills might be put to better use in the world of motorsport. During a practice day at Brands Hatch he found the new Lotus team working on their latest car and struck up a conversation with Mike Costin who duly introduced him to Colin Chapman. Having spent the day with them he asked for a lift back to north London and was treated to a fish and chip dinner. Later, Chapman asked Costin who his friend was to which Mike replied “I thought he was your friend”. But Graham returned the next day to ask for a job with the result that he became responsible for building and repairing gearboxes. He was also a team mechanic and part of the class-winning Lotus team at Le Mans in 1957 but he was more interested in securing a drive as Chapman discovered when a large telephone bill arrived, due to Graham’s habit of commandeering the Lotus Car’s phone and calling every team manager to ask for a drive. His persistence paid off when, in 1958, he was drafted into the Lotus team, making his Formula 1 debut at Monaco, a track where he would create history as the first driver to win it five times. By the time he retired in 1975 he had amassed a long record of victories at circuits around the world. The photograph shows Graham, at the age of 27 in 1955, standing beside a works Lotus IX, three years before he began his driving career when ‘Graham Hill’ would ultimately become one of the most famous names in the sport.
