Alan Jacobs


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A keen Morris dancer with a countryman’s voice, [Roy Dommett] was largely responsible for Chevaline, the naval update of Polaris in the 1970s. As I talked to him, he sat by his fire; an old panama hat wobbled on top of the stack of books next to his armchair. It gave him quiet satisfaction that he looked less like Dr Strangelove than like Falstaff, or some other figure of innocent pleasure out of deep England. Another of the rocketmen I talked to spotted him by chance once in Bristol. ‘These Morris men came dancing up the street, led by this big fat bloke in a kind of Andy Pandy outfit who was bopping people on the head with a pig’s bladder – and I said to my wife, “Sweetheart, you won’t believe me, but that man is one of the brains behind Britain’s nuclear defence.”’
— Francis Spufford, Backroom Boys