Happy Birthday, You Bastard.

July 15th, Birabongse Bhanudej

Birabongse Bhanudej
July 15th, 1914.

What is this life if, full of care
We have no time to stand and stare
(Leisure, W.H.Davies, 1911)

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One of the oddest things about being British and living in America is the Land of the Free’s strange notion that just standing about not doing much can constitute a crime of some description. In Britain, where trespass, unless there are some aggravating circumstances, doesn’t constitute a criminal offense, the notion of just standing about not doing a whole lot is not only perfectly normal, but park benches are routinely provided for the weary traveller to rest their aching bones and just watch the day wander past. Texas is a vast landscape of horizons where you can see the Earth curving away before you. Britain is one of hedgerows and sunken lanes that seem to have been constructed purely to give a stationary observer something to watch.

And yet, even in 21st Century Britain, especially in the cities, people scuttle about their days, hunkered and blinkered to the glory of the world around them. It doesn’t help that Britain seems to have become a country in which, should you stop walking on a city street momentarily, a young police officer will accost you under Section 43 of the Terrorism Act and demand you explain your lack of urgency.

Five million times a year, people file in and out of Baron’s Court Tube Station in the London Borough of Hammersmith. Not all different people, of course. Probably most of those five million entries and exits are the same people, coming and going in their daily routines. But I wonder how many of them have ever stopped to look at the Grade II listed, Victorian, terracotta frontage and marveled at the Art Nouveau detailing in the stained-glass frontage, or the beautifully elegant ‘District Railway’ signage on the front?

Probably loads. Let’s give the good people of London some credit, after all. But it is a beautiful building and all beautiful buildings, like fine art, are designed to be stared at. So, stand there and gaze at them. Police be damned.

Five million is, as you don’t need me to tell you, an awful lot of ins and outs and sometimes people go in and never come out again. Some of them move along on new journeys, deep into the troglodyte depths of the world’s oldest underground railway system where there are over 270 places one can pop out again, but some of them meet their end on the cold floor of one of the platforms.

Such an ending was the fate of a man in his early 70s, two days before Christmas in 1985.

Apparently the victim of a sudden and massive heart-attack, he was smartly but not expensively dressed and appeared to be of east Asian descent. Unfortunately for the police, he carried no form of identity and had nothing on him that could give a clue as to who he was. The only thing the police found on him was a handwritten note in an oriental script. The police sent the note to the University of London for identification, who replied that the writing was in Thai. The note was then forwarded to the Thai Embassy who informed the police that it was addressed ‘To Prince Bira’ and that not only was the deceased a Thai national, he was a member of the ruling dynasty of the Kingdom of Thailand, the Ratchawong Chakkri, and his name was His Highness Prince Birabongse Bhanudej.

His Serene Highness Prince (Mom Chao) Birabongse Bhanudej Bhanubandh was born on 15th July 1914 in Phra Borom Maha Ratcha Wang, the Grand Palace, Bangkok, in what was then Siam, now Thailand. His father was His Royal Highness Prince Bhanurangsi Savangwongse, Prince Uncle and his mother was his father’s second wife, Mom Lek Bhanubandh na Ayudhya. His mother died when he was only four years old.

His paternal grandfather was Phra Poramenthra Ramathibodhi Srisindra Maha Mongkut Phra Chomklao Chao Yu Hua Phra Sayam Thewa Maha Makut Witthaya Maharat, who was better known, fortunately for those of us unlucky enough not to be fluent in the beautiful Thai language, as Mongkut, or Rama IV, the fourth King of Siam. Mongkut was the king portrayed in the spectacularly racist The King and I by Yul Brunner, among others, who all portrayed the part of a Thai king perfectly by being white and going full pidgin English, Slitty-Eyed foreigner. 1999’s Anna and the King tried to redress that portrayal by casting Hong Kong’s Chow Yun-fat in the role, presumably because he was at least Asian. How it never occurred to them to ask a Thai actor to play the role of one their beloved Royal dynasty is not recorded.

In 1927, Prince Bira was sent to finish his schooling in England, enrolling at Eton, and whilst he was there, his father died, leaving him an orphan in the care of his cousin, also in the UK at the time, Prince Chula Chakrabongse.

Prince Bira intended to read at Trinity College, Cambridge but failed the entrance exam. Expressing a love of art, Bira was taken under the wing of the sculptor Sir Charles Wheeler and whilst he showed some aptitude for it, his lack of draughtsman skills held him back and so in 1934, he enrolled in the Byam Shaw School of Art. He wasn’t there for long before he fell in love with Ceril Heycock, much to the chagrin of her parents and Prince Chula. They were not permitted to marry until 1938.

Ceril was not his only first love. In 1935 he caught the motor racing bug, entering a Riley Imp under the powder blue colors of Prince Chula’s White Mouse Racing team. He drove the Riley at Brooklands and immediately embarked on a career in racing. With houses in Geneva and the south of France, he soon became active on the European circuit.

Later that year, prince Chula gave him an English Racing Automobiles RB2 which he named Romulus. Romulus and Prince Bira finished second in their first outing together, despite having to stop at one point to fix a faulty ignition. Bira raced with some success, finishing the Donington Grand Prix among much faster cars in a healthy fifth place.

For the next season, the team bought another ERA, RB5, named, of course, Remus. They raced at home and abroad, Bira earning the Coup de Prince Rainier at Monte Carlo. They bought a Formula One Maserati 8CM and again finished 5th at Donington and a fine 3rd at Brooklands.

The next season saw the Formula One driver Dick Seaman move to the giant Mercedes team and White Mouse Racing bought his Grand Prix Delage, all of its spares, and employed experienced mechanics to run the cars. It was a disaster. The cars were unreliable and outpaced and finances were stretched. Bira ended up racing the ERAs most of the time, simply to finish the races.

They invested in another C-Type ERA, chassis R12C which Bira named Hanuman after the Hindu deity, attaching a big embossed silver badge of the god on the side of the car. Following an accident and rebuild, the car soon became Hanuman II.

After the war, Bira flew his own twin engined Miles Gemini aircraft from London to Bangkok.

He returned to racing at the wheel of a F1 Maserati 4CLT fitted with a V12 engine. Terrible reliability and a major accident ruined his season. But in 1954, at the wheel of a Maserati 250F, he won the Grand Prix des Frontières at Chimay in Belgium and came 4th at the French Grand Prix. The following year he won the New Zealand Grand Prix at Ardmore and then retired from racing.

But he wasn’t done competing. He turned to sailing and competed in the 1956, 1960, 1964 and 1972 Olympics with limited success but apparently having the time of his life.

A funeral service for Prince Bira was held at the Wat Buddhapadipa in 1985 and he was cremated according to Buddhist traditions.

Until Alex Albon made his debut in 2019, Prince Bira was Thailan’s only ever driver in Formula One. The Bira Circuit in Thailand is named after him and White Mouse Racing’s colors of powder blue the color of a dress worn by a lady he met in 1934, with a yellow understripe are still the national racing colors of Thailand.

Some of Prince Bira’s cars are still around today. You can stand and stare at them, if you wish. Take your time.

ERA R12B Hanuman II (Credit: John Harwood)