Michael Hickey, who passed away on 8 November 2013 aged 84, was a man of many parts and larger than life. He joined the Club in 1959 in the middle of an Army and Air Corps career which started in 1947 and took him overseas to Korea and Malaya on active service, Germany, East Africa, Suez and Aden.
Hickey’s interpretation of the strain on Captain Keith Ticehurst
When on postings to London he would come to LRC and speak at Wednesday night dinners and give hilarious accounts of his military life, which will be warmly remembered. He continued irregular rowing “until his knees gave up in 1996” and was instrumental in organising an LRC visit to a regatta in Berlin. Michael was an excellent cartoonist, often using the back of menu cards at annual dinners; a number of his witty works of art hang in the clubhouse. He was also an ‘official’ cartoonist for the Club’s 125th anniversary publication in 1981.
Michael occupied his retirement as a noted military historian, writing books on airborne warfare, Gallipoli, and the First World War, and was a research fellow in military studies at both Birmingham University and Kings College, London. A favourite relaxation was choral singing – he won a bursary, and had been head chorister, at Magdalen College School, as had his father and grandfather – and his life was remembered fittingly at a choral evensong in the College Chapel.
We send our belated condolences to his wife, Bridget, and their two sons. Their household included two dogs and at one time “a domesticated turkey”.
