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Humphrey Lyttelton 1941.
Humphrey Richard Adeane Lyttelton was born in 1921 at Eton College, where his father, the second son of Viscount Cobham, was a housemaster. Initially playing the harmonica, Lyttelton formed a school jazz group, which included the future journalist Ludovic Kennedy on drums. Attending the 1936 Eton vs Harrow cricket match at Lord’s, Lyttelton and his mother slipped away, and she bought him his first trumpet. After leaving school, he worked for a while at the Port Talbot Steelworks, where he became, in his own words, ‘a romantic socialist’. Called up for war service, he was commissioned from Sandhurst in November 1941 into the Grenadier Guards. Seeing action in Italy, he waded ashore during the Salerno landings carrying a pistol in one hand and a trumpet in the other.
Using his demob grant, he studied at Camberwell School of Art before securing a job as a cartoonist with the Daily Mail. While at art school, he joined George Webb’s Dixielanders, who played a significant part in the post-war British jazz boom. Wearing his old army battle-dress, now dyed blue, and accompanied by a beard and
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