Richard Addinsell

Historian Martin Middlebrook wrote that Addinsell had served in World War II aboard a bomber with the RAF under his "real" name of F.L. Chipperfield, and this story has been propagated in many pieces about Addinsell. The truth, however, is that Middlebrook erred in his assertion, as laid out in the following statement by the real Chipperfield's son: "Frank Leslie Chipperfield (169500), DFC, was my father and I can assure that he and Richard Addinsell were not the same person. Dad was a gifted pianist, and he earned his living playing piano professionally across the UK and continental Europe before the war. He even did a little composing - I have the programme (we Yanks call it a "program," but we can discuss how we've butchered your language in another venue) of a musical production called "Ye Gods!" performed at R.A.F. Eastchurch in Jun 1946 for which Dad composed the words and music. Dad flew as a navigator or as an "Observer" (I have a picture of him in uniform with the winged "O" brevet) on at least 4 missions with 9 Squadron, at least 29 missions (including Nuremberg) with 619 Squadron, and at least 13 missions (including Dresden) in a Mosquito as a member of the Pathfinder Force in 627 Squadron. His pilot throughout most of his career in 619 and 627 was Pilot Officer R.W. Olsen, DFC. After the war in Europe, Dad was assigned to the Tiger Force to continue the war in Japan, but that aspect of his service was happily interrupted by the Japanese surrender. He stayed in the service at R.A.F. Eastchurch until July 1946, at which point he hitched a ride on the carrier H.M.S. Queen, came to the United States, married my mother, produced seven children, and never returned to England. Curiously, but perhaps not surprisingly, he never again boarded an airplane - commercial or otherwise. He died in 1992 at age 81. I greatly admire Martin Middlebrook's work, and Dad would surely have been honored to have been linked to Richard Addinsell, but Mr. Middlebrook got it wrong in this case.Lynn Chipperfield St. Louis, Missouri, USA".

English composer Richard Addinsell was born in 1904.

First musical score was for the theatre "Adam's Opera" by Clemence Dane (1928)

After finishing his law studies at Oxford, he took a short course in music at the Royal College of Music in London and studied from 1929 to 1932 in Berlin and Vienna.

Went to New York in 1933 to write and supervise music for a stage version of "Alice in Wonderland"

His famous 'Warsaw Concerto', a Rachmaninoff like piece for piano and orchestra composed for the RKO picture Suicide Squadron (1941), is still being performed.