Arnold Lunn, R I P

Arnold Lunn died in London on June 2, but at 86 was absolutely undaunted, though the flesh had become very weak. He was at work for the next issue of Ski Survey on his contribution to the Olympic Committee’s history of the Games. Also on a book—this time on Lakes Thün and Brienz; on several articles, including one for this journal; and he was expecting, in America, the reissue of his book Spanish Rehearsal, about the civil war. His most recent article had appeared in The Tablet only the day before, and his son Peter, and his wife Phyllis, read it aloud to him in the hospital. I can imagine his chuckling over his words, which greatly amused him, as they did everybody else, save possibly their victims who, come to think of it, probably constituted a majority of readers. He took an unrestrained, unaffected pleasure in his work, which was. amiably sarcastic, in the maieutic British tradition, wonderfully well turned, unrelenting but good-natured. He was a most serious man, who saw the humor of every situation.

His career had begun only months after graduating from Harrow, a few years after Winston Churchill. He wrote The Harrovians, an exposé of sorts of public school life, tame stuff by the standards of The Fourth of June by David Benedictus, which came along 50 years later about life in Eton; but enough to launch him as a radical young writer. His interest in sports and mountaineering dominated him in those days; and one summer before he was 22 he fell while on a solo climbing expedition. For several hours he was without help, then they found him, took him to the hospital, and he blessed himself that a) the anaesthetist was incompetent and b) he understood German, because he was awake when he should have been unconscious, enough so to hear the doctors making preparations to amputate his leg. This, from his strapped-down position on the operating table, he forthwith forbade, summoning all the authority he could in his youthful voice. The result was a leg deformed, slightly shorter than the companion leg. Athletes and mountaineers of the world wondered what the competition would have been from Lunn if he had had normal legs. Because he scaled everything in Switzerland there was to scale, and raced with the early British ski teams, and was made president of the Ski Club of Great Britain over 50 years ago, and founded the prestigious Kandahar Club in Mürren. It was in those days that he conceived the idea of the slalom, which he introduced into Olympic competition where it’s been a fixture ever since. As the years went on, he found skiing more and more difficult, but he persevered, and I skied with him once when he was 75 years old.

About the Author

William F. Buckley Jr.

William F. Buckley Jr. founded National Review magazine in 1955.

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William F. Buckley Jr.

Arnold Lunn died in London on June 2, but at 86 was absolutely undaunted, though the flesh had become very weak. He was at work for the next issue of Ski Survey on his contribution to the Olympic Committee’s history of the Games. Also on a book—this time on Lakes Thün and Brienz; on several articles, including one for this journal; and he was expecting, in America, the reissue of his book Spanish Rehearsal, about the civil war. His most recent article had appeared in The Tablet only the day before, and his son Peter, and his wife Phyllis, read it aloud to him in the hospital. I can imagine his chuckling over his words, which greatly amused him, as they did everybody else, save possibly their victims who, come to think of it, probably constituted a majority of readers. He took an unrestrained, unaffected pleasure in his work, which was. amiably sarcastic, in the maieutic British tradition, wonderfully well turned, unrelenting but good-natured. He was a most serious man, who saw the humor of every situation.

His career had begun only months after graduating from Harrow, a few years after Winston Churchill. He wrote The Harrovians, an exposé of sorts of public school life, tame stuff by the standards of The Fourth of June by David Benedictus, which came along 50 years later about life in Eton; but enough to launch him as a radical young writer. His interest in sports and mountaineering dominated him in those days; and one summer before he was 22 he fell while on a solo climbing expedition. For several hours he was without help, then they found him, took him to the hospital, and he blessed himself that a) the anaesthetist was incompetent and b) he understood German, because he was awake when he should have been unconscious, enough so to hear the doctors making preparations to amputate his leg. This, from his strapped-down position on the operating table, he forthwith forbade, summoning all the authority he could in his youthful voice. The result was a leg deformed, slightly shorter than the companion leg. Athletes and mountaineers of the world wondered what the competition would have been from Lunn if he had had normal legs. Because he scaled everything in Switzerland there was to scale, and raced with the early British ski teams, and was made president of the Ski Club of Great Britain over 50 years ago, and founded the prestigious Kandahar Club in Mürren. It was in those days that he conceived the idea of the slalom, which he introduced into Olympic competition where it’s been a fixture ever since. As the years went on, he found skiing more and more difficult, but he persevered, and I skied with him once when he was 75 years old.