Life
In 1927, he was commissioned into the Royal Horse Guards. In 1935 he married Angela Claire Louise, daughter of William Dudley Ward, a Conservative Member of Parliament. They went on to have two sons and three daughters.
When the Second World War broke out in 1939 Laycock's interest in science led to his being appointed to the chemical warfare section of the British Expeditionary Force in France. This was a dead end position, and Laycock was sent home to attend the Staff college, thus missing the Battle of France. In the summer of 1940 Winston Churchill appointed Admiral of the Fleet Sir Roger Keyes as head of Combined Operations, and Keyes soon sent for Laycock, whom he knew by reputation. Laycock was then a Captain in the Royal Horse Guards and had just received a posting to India. The actor David Niven later claimed that he had introduced Laycock to the Commandos, as Laycock was related to his wife Primula Susan Rollo. Niven claimed to have helped to arrange for Laycock to be interviewed by Dudley Clarke, which resulted in another officer being assigned to India and Laycock going on to form Number 8 Commando.
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Famous quotes containing the word life:
“I sought the simple life that Nature yields;”
—George Crabbe (1754–1832)
“Allow me, whom Fortune always desires to bury, lay down my life in these final trivialities. Many have freely died in longlasting loves, among whose number may the earth cover me as well.”
—Propertius Sextus (c. 50–16 B.C.)
“For twenty-five centuries, Western knowledge has tried to look upon the world. It has failed to understand that the world is not for the beholding. It is for hearing. It is not legible, but audible. Our science has always desired to monitor, measure, abstract, and castrate meaning, forgetting that life is full of noise and that death alone is silent: work noise, noise of man, and noise of beast. Noise bought, sold, or prohibited. Nothing essential happens in the absence of noise.”
—Jacques Attali (b. 1943)