Early Life
Irvine was born in Birkenhead, Cheshire, one of six children of William Ferguson Irvine (1869–1962) by Lilian Davies-Colley (1870–1950). His father's family had Scottish and Welsh roots, whilst his mother was from an old Cheshire family. He was a cousin of journalist and writer Lyn Irvine, and also of pioneering female surgeon Eleanor Davies Colley and of political activist Harriet Shaw Weaver.
He was educated at Birkenhead School and Shrewsbury School, where he demonstrated a natural engineering acumen, able to improvise fixes or improvements to almost anything mechanical. During the First World War, he created a small stir at the War Office by sending them a design for an interrupter gear to allow a machine gun to fire from a propeller-driven aeroplane without damaging the propeller's blades, and also a design for a gyroscopic stabilizer for aircraft.
He was also a keen sportsman and particularly excelled at rowing. His prodigious ability as a rower made him a star of the 1919 'Peace Regatta' at Henley, and propelled him to Merton College, Oxford to study Engineering. At Oxford he joined the Oxford University Mountaineering Club, and was also a member of the Oxford crew for the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race in 1922 and a member of the winning crew in 1923, the only occasion upon which Oxford did so between 1913 and 1937.
Read more about this topic: Andrew Irvine (mountaineer)
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