2 replies to this topic

[Vitesse2]

Count Doric Heyden is one of those people who appear briefly in motor racing history and then apparently sink without trace.

All that seems to be known about him is that he was a White Russian emigré and that he was the UK agent for Delahaye in the late 1930s. There's presumably some connection with Rob Walker, as he acted as entrant for Walker and others at the time: Anthony Blight's "French Sports Car Revolution" includes a picture of him taken in 1938, showing a rather dapper and slightly balding man, probably in his 40s.

Earlier Counts Heyden - originally of Dutch ancestry - were often naval men, while the most famous was probably the Zemstvoist politician Count Peter Heyden, who died in 1907. The next Count Hayden was a Rear Admiral and was a senior member of the court of Czar Nicholas II, but I can find no further trace of him after 1912. Nevertheless, given the time scale Count Doric Heyden was presumably his immediate successor (and son?)

Not a lot to go on there. Can anyone provide any more? And is there any connection to the computer suppliers Heyden & Son of London NW4? That was originally a scientific and technical publishing company, but the publishing side was sold to John Wiley in about 1982.

[Vitesse2]

Just bumping this in the hope someone might notice ...

Retracing my previous steps, I found three 1939 press references to him being Count T Heyden rather than Count D Heyden. Two in race reports in The Times and this one from the Skegness Standard:

http://skegnessvideo...first-delahaye/

Now, obviously T might be a mishearing of D, but the Count does seem to both rise and disappear without trace, while the only Doric Heyden I can find is the co-author of a 1994 book in French on Meso-American architecture.

Phone book records suggest that Delahaye's London concession was set up in about 1937 at 22 Queensberry Mews West, SW7 and closed in 1940, reopening elsewhere in 1949.

So could all this point to the Count being based in Paris? It's certainly not unknown as a refuge for White Russians - if that's what he actually was. (I have explored the possibility that this might be the Paris-based Belgian Baron van der Heyden a Hauzeur, who was an occasional figure in London society at the time, but it looks unlikely as he was about 20 years too old.)

[milestone 11]

Entrant of a Delahaye 135S for Rob Walker and Ian Connel at Le Mans 1939.