Biography
Leeke was the only son of Henry Leeke, also an athlete, and grandson of William Leeke, a Waterloo veteran. He was born in Weston Hall, Stafford.
As his father did before him, Leeke represented Cambridge University in the hammer and shot put, and was English Amateur Champion for both events. He was associated with the London Athletic Club. One of the first British athletes to throw the discus, he set a British record in 1908. During the 1908 Olympic Trials, Leeke threw the javelin 135-8½ (41.37m) in the freestyle event.
In 1898 he married Catherine Herbert, younger daughter of Charles G. Fullerton. They had one son and one daughter, and resided in Hill, Warwickshire.
Shortly after the outbreak of World War I, Leeke joined the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, he was granted a commission as a temporary lieutenant on 22 September 1914, and placed in charge of machine guns for D Company, 9th Battalion. He died of fever at the Thornhill Isolation Hospital, Aldershot on 29 May 1915. He is buried in Aldershot Military Cemetery.
Read more about this topic: Henry Alan Leeke
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“As we approached the log house,... the projecting ends of the logs lapping over each other irregularly several feet at the corners gave it a very rich and picturesque look, far removed from the meanness of weather-boards. It was a very spacious, low building, about eighty feet long, with many large apartments ... a style of architecture not described by Vitruvius, I suspect, though possibly hinted at in the biography of Orpheus.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)