Legacy
Between them, Donald Campbell and his father had set eleven speed records on water and ten on land.
The story of Donald Campbell's last attempt at the water speed record on Coniston Water was told in the BBC television film Across the Lake in 1988, with Anthony Hopkins as Donald. Nine years earlier, Robert Hardy had played Donald's father, Sir Malcolm Campbell, in the BBC2 Playhouse television drama "Speed King" - both were written by Roger Milner and produced by Innes Lloyd. In 2003, the BBC showed a documentary reconstruction of Campbell's fateful water-speed record attempt in an episode of Days That Shook the World. It featured a mixture of modern reconstruction and original film footage. All of the original colour clips were taken from a film capturing the event, Campbell at Coniston by John Lomax, a local amateur filmmaker from Wallasey, England. Lomax's film won awards worldwide in the late 1960s for recording the final weeks of Campbell's life.
A blue plaque commemorates Campbell and his father at Canbury School, Kingston Hill, Kingston-upon Thames, where they lived.
In the village of Coniston, the Ruskin Museum has a display of Donald Campbell memorabilia, and the Bristol Orpheus engine recovered in 2001 is also displayed. The engine's casing is mostly missing, having acted as a sacrificial anode in its time underwater but the internals are remarkably preserved. Donald Campbell's helmet from the ill fated run is also on display.
A project is under way to rebuild 'K7', aimed at returning Bluebird to run again at safe demonstration speeds on Coniston before housing her at the Ruskin museum. The project is ongoing with no fixed completion date.
Daughter Gina Campbell has been heavily involved in the project to restore the "Bluebird", and has also contributed to the family legacy in a more direct way, by setting the women's world water speed record in 1984 in "Bluebird II", at 122.8 mph (197.6 km/h). She bettered this mark in 1990 with a speed of 166 mph (267 km/h) - a record which stood until 1993.
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Famous quotes containing the word legacy:
“What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)