SCOTCH BOTTLE AND LIFE MAGAZINE

Donald Healey wasn’t averse to self-promotion, and he enjoyed the frantic networking required to establish his fledgling car company in the mid-1940s. His granddaughter is in awe of the speed with which he built up the business after 1945.

In the early 1950s, Lord Calvert Whisky ran a series of magazine advertisements featuring ‘men of distinction’, who tended to be well-groomed explorers, business types, ornithologists – and up-and-coming motor magnate Donald Healey. The family kept a copy of Life magazine with a full-colour period artwork ad showing Donald looking swish and holding a glass of whisky, with a Big Healey in the background. Not an image you’d find today.

They also hung on to a complimentary bottle of Lord Calvert with a small newspaper picture of DMH attached to it. ‘That bottle was in our drinks cupboard all my life without being opened. Then it was opened and I got the blame – but it wasn’t me!’ says Kate. She adds ‘You’d better not put that in’, but we have, because it’s irresistible.

As for her recollections of Donald Healey the man: ‘He was always doing something fascinating in his workshop. I remember the smell of solder and hot electrics. He didn’t really have time for children, but he was always very sweet. People remember his energy and invention. To me he was always a “man of distinction”.’