Biograghy
Yuri Gagarin’s flight in April 1961 fired up the then 12-year old Tim’s interest in space. On 12 April 1961, Tim went to London with his mother, Marnie from home in Epsom, Surrey, England for a shopping trip and we went to a Lyons Corner House in the Strand. Tim ate a huge lemon meringue pie and later walked to the Leicster Square tube station (the underground) and outside were placards for the first editions of the Evening News and the Evening Standard newspapers. "MAN IN SPACE". Tim became a "space nut."
In 1962, he brought his first copy of Flight International, the weekly British magazine that
covered space (and of which he would become its spaceflight correspondent in 1984). Tim was
obsessed with space during his schooldays and the great space decade of the Sixties. He got his
first job on a magazine, Space in 1966 and at the age of 20, flew to the USA on a new Jumbo jet
and headed for Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Centre (KSC) on a Greyhound bus during an
18,000 mile journey around the States.
Tim was badged up to see his first launch, a Titan IIIC, and was there to see Apollo 13 launched, photographing the astronauts as they left for the launch pad, in April 1970.
He met many astronauts whose pictures used to hang on his bedroom wall and was back at
the KSC again in July 1971 to see Apollo 15 launched and to meet more of his heroes.
In 1972, Tim checked out an Apollo spacesuit at ILC Industries in Dover, Delaware.
The first of his 35-plus books was published in 1971 and he began to do interviews on local radio, while working in advertising and public relations, with BTR and Air Products. Declared redundant in 1982, Tim went freelance and continued work in radio and made his TV debut, which was followed by a lot of TV work, including extensive coverage of the Challenger accident in 1986 and resident space expert on BBC’s Saturday Superstore and Going Live. In 1984, Flight International - the magazine that had fired his interest in space - had rung and asked him to "do some work".
Tim was Flight's spaceflight correspondent until 2006, visiting many of the world's space
centres and interviewing moonmen, astronauts, cosmonauts and space chiefs and covering Space
Shuttle and other launches and missions. He was one of the first journalists allowed into the
Star City cosmonaut training centre, near Moscow in 1984 and in 1988, one of the first British
journalists to cover a manned launch at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, the same year in
which he moved from his hometown of Epsom, Surrey to an “electronic cottage” near Bideford,
Devon - one of the country's first "remote" journalists.
In 1994, he joined the STS 62 Space Shuttle crew for launch, in-orbit operations and landing simulation sessions at Houston. Tim also operates a commercial spaceflight photo library, Genesis which he established in 1990. It now specialises in space history images. He presents entertaining and well-received lectures for schools, colleges and other audiences and also presents "Adventures of a Space Nut", an "evening with" style presentation for theatres, telling the story of a 12 year old boy, his ambition to be space journalist and the adventures of reporting space events around the world.
Epilogue
On 22 November 2004, I was back in Epsom, again.
I walked from Beech Tree Cottage and down Church Street with the usual feelings of intense nostalgia. After passing under the East Street railway bridge, I entered the area that my Mum had once so famously called the “wrong side of the railway”. About a mile or so down Hook Road, I entered a little shopping precinct. One premises was named Longhurst.
I entered the very pleasant reception of the business and was welcomed by the manager, who led me into a little room. He left and closed the door behind him.
I had a card in my hand. On one side was a picture of a lemon meringue pie cut out from a box I brought in a supermarket.
On the other side of the card, I had written:
12 April 1961
Thank you, Mum
Love, Tim
I laid the card by my mother’s side. She looked so peaceful and had a slight smile on her face. Such a frail but well dressed little lady of 83.
Later that morning, we laid Mum to rest with my father in a joint grave at Epsom Cemetery, Ashley Road.
I felt that an era had well and truly ended.
Tim's latest project is the paperback book "One Small Steppe - A Personal Story of the Space Age 1948 - 1989", covering Tim's personal space story up until 1989. The book is available to buy on this site. Click here for more information.