Joe Lubbock
Engineer involved in the Spitfire and computers who later gained renown as an artist and writer
JOE LUBBOCK, who has died aged 103, had an eventful Second World War in the Royal Engineers and postwar was involved in the early development of computers. In his forties, however, he turned his attention to art and writing.
He became known for his meticulously composed limited edition hand-bound books of writings and original copperplate prints of the natural world, examples of which are kept in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, the Bodleian Library at Oxford, the British Library and the Royal Library at Windsor Castle. In 1996 the V&A put on a three-month exhibition of his work.
Joseph Guy Lubbock was born in Chelsea on May 20 1915 to Guy Lubbock, an Army officer who would gain the rank of Brigadier-general, and his wife, Lettice. His great grandfather, Sir John Lubbock, 3rd Bt, FRS, was a friend and associate of Charles Darwin, while a great-uncle, Sir John Lubbock, 4th Bt, was a Liberal politician, scientist and polymath who was created Lord Avebury in 1900.
Joe spent his early childhood in Norfolk when his parents were in India with the Army, later moving to Mountnessing, Essex, then, when he was in his late teens, to Westerham in Kent.
He was educated at Eton and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he read Engineering. After graduation he worked on the development of the Spitfire, recalling that when a test pilot complained that the aircraft was slightly tail-heavy, “I put in two big lumps of lead in the nose just under the propeller”. He then worked with Barnes Wallace on the Wellington bomber, “doing endless calculations
on how many bombs it could carry, depending on the target”.
He served throughout the war in the Royal Engineers. In June 1940 he was at Brest, where his regiment became separated from the evacuation and had to wait until the Navy returned with two recovery boats, one of which never made it home.
In April 1941 he married Ruth Gurney, whom he had met during the 1930s in Norfolk, when they discovered that both were descended from the Gurney family of Earlham Hall near Norwich – a line of bankers and campaigners against slavery and for the welfare of the poor. Elizabeth Fry, the prison reformer, was their mutual great-great-great aunt.
Some of the wedding guests arrived on tractors, which were exempt from petrol rationing. Their honeymoon was spent at Barton Mills on the Suffolk border, which was as far as they could get on their petrol coupons.
Not long after their marriage Lubbock was told he was being posted to the Far East, though in the event he did not go, having been passed as unfit. Most of his friends did not return. He also served as a bomb disposal expert, removing bombs from railway lines.
After the war Lubbock moved with his wife and the first two of three daughters to Maidenhead where, when the Thames burst its banks, they had to be rescued, with the children’s pet mice, by Navy duck boat.
Lubbock had been a keen artist from childhood and after the war he studied briefly at St Martin’s School of Art, concentrating on drawing, before returning to engineering. Moving to Hatch End, north-west London, he worked at Elliot Automation as a specialist in computer-aided gunnery control and missile systems, helping to develop a rangefinder that could detect bombers overhead and guide missiles to explode on impact.
In 1963 the family moved to Waldringfield, Suffolk, where Lubbock pursued a love of sailing on the River Deben and resumed his hobby of painting and writing. After the success of his first book, Art and the Spiritual Life, he took early retirement to concentrate on writing and printmaking.
Lubbock produced his prints on a hand press in his studio, using his engineering skills to design new methods of copperplate printing. His work drew on the beauty of the Suffolk landscape and his travels with Ruth to remote parts of the world, including the Himalayas, Galapagos and Antarctica. The prints, accompanied by Lubbock’s text, were collected into books and bound in leather. He published 15 over the years, of which the last two were commercially printed.
An accomplished sailor, Lubbock enjoyed many successes in yacht racing with the boat designer Uffa Fox, and once beat the Duke of Edinburgh’s yacht to first place in his class at Cowes Week. He recalled the headline in The Times the following day: “Brilliant Royal helmsman second in class at Cowes Week”. Only the last line of the story mentioned Lubbock’s victory.
A great lover of classical music, especially opera and ballet, he was a frequent visitor to Covent Garden. The Lubbocks’ long and happy marriage was sustained by a strong religious faith and in 2016 they celebrated their 75th wedding anniversary, but Ruth died the following year.
Joe Lubbock is survived by their daughters Jennie and Catherine.
Joe Lubbock, born May 20 1915, died January 22 2019