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Ian Dury
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Ian Dury
Ian Robins Dury (12 May 1942 – 27 March 2000) was an English singer, songwriter and actor who rose to fame in the late 1970s, during the punk and new wave era of rock music. He was the lead singer and lyricist of Kilburn and the High Roads, the Kilburns, Ian Dury and the Blockheads and Ian Dury and the Music Students.
Ian Dury was born at 43 Weald Rise in Harrow, at that time in Middlesex. His early years were spent in Harrow Weald (although it is often misreported that he was born in Upminster, Essex, an impression he often encouraged) and in Mevagissey, Cornwall, during the Blitz. His father, William George Dury (born 23 September 1905 in Southborough, Kent, died 25 February 1968 in Victoria, London), was a former boxer, coach and bus driver, and chauffeur for Rolls-Royce. His mother, Margaret "Peggy" Cuthbertson Walker (born 17 April 1910, Rochdale, Lancashire, died 20 December 1994 in Hampstead, London), was a health visitor, a doctor's daughter and the granddaughter of an East Donegal Ulster Protestant landowner. Bill and Peggy married in 1939 and set up home in Belsize Park, London.
Bill Dury was absent for work for long periods, so Peggy often took Ian to stay with her parents in Mevagissey. After the Second World War, the family moved briefly to Switzerland, where Ian's father was chauffeuring for a millionaire and the Western European Union. In 1946, Peggy brought Ian back to England and they relocated to Cranham, near Upminster in Essex, to live with Peggy's sisters. Although he saw his father on visits, they were never to live together again. At age seven, Dury contracted polio, most likely, he believed, at Westcliff Swimming Pool in Southend-on-Sea during the 1949 polio epidemic. After six weeks of isolation in the Royal Cornwall Infirmary, Truro, Ian was moved by ambulance back to Essex, to Black Notley Hospital in Braintree, where he spent eighteen months regaining his strength and mobility. Polio caused paralysis on the left-hand side of his body which led to a permanent disability.
Ian attended Chailey Heritage Craft School, East Sussex, from 1951 till 1954. Chailey was a hospital school for disabled children that had an ethos of toughening up its students, often by leaving the less physically able to find their own way up off the floor. Arguably, this harsh approach contributed to the tough and determined person Dury became. Chailey taught trades such as cobbling and printing, but Dury's mother wanted him to focus on academic studies, so Aunt Moll (Mary Walker), a Buckinghamshire Education Officer, arranged for him to attend the Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe. Ian found this school a challenge and recounted being punished for misdemeanours by being forced by prefects to learn long tracts of poetry until a housemaster found him sobbing and put a stop to it:
I had to go into a box room where the suitcases were stored and learn 80 lines of Ode to Autumn by yer man Keats. If I got a word wrong I had to go back, they added that to the end of the sentence and after five nights of this my head had definitely gone.
He left school at 16, having achieved GCE 'O' levels in English Language, English Literature and Art to study art and design at Walthamstow College of Art, where he met lifelong friend, pop artist and teacher Peter Blake. In 1963 Ian began an MA in painting at the Royal College of Art, graduating in 1966.
In 1967 Dury took part in a group exhibition, "Fantasy and Figuration", alongside Elizabeth Rathmell, Pat Douthwaite, Herbert Kitchen and Stass Paraskos at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London.
Between 1966 and 1973 he was an art teacher at Luton College of Technology and at Canterbury College of Art. He also painted commercial illustrations for The Sunday Times in the early 1970s.
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Ian Dury
Ian Robins Dury (12 May 1942 – 27 March 2000) was an English singer, songwriter and actor who rose to fame in the late 1970s, during the punk and new wave era of rock music. He was the lead singer and lyricist of Kilburn and the High Roads, the Kilburns, Ian Dury and the Blockheads and Ian Dury and the Music Students.
Ian Dury was born at 43 Weald Rise in Harrow, at that time in Middlesex. His early years were spent in Harrow Weald (although it is often misreported that he was born in Upminster, Essex, an impression he often encouraged) and in Mevagissey, Cornwall, during the Blitz. His father, William George Dury (born 23 September 1905 in Southborough, Kent, died 25 February 1968 in Victoria, London), was a former boxer, coach and bus driver, and chauffeur for Rolls-Royce. His mother, Margaret "Peggy" Cuthbertson Walker (born 17 April 1910, Rochdale, Lancashire, died 20 December 1994 in Hampstead, London), was a health visitor, a doctor's daughter and the granddaughter of an East Donegal Ulster Protestant landowner. Bill and Peggy married in 1939 and set up home in Belsize Park, London.
Bill Dury was absent for work for long periods, so Peggy often took Ian to stay with her parents in Mevagissey. After the Second World War, the family moved briefly to Switzerland, where Ian's father was chauffeuring for a millionaire and the Western European Union. In 1946, Peggy brought Ian back to England and they relocated to Cranham, near Upminster in Essex, to live with Peggy's sisters. Although he saw his father on visits, they were never to live together again. At age seven, Dury contracted polio, most likely, he believed, at Westcliff Swimming Pool in Southend-on-Sea during the 1949 polio epidemic. After six weeks of isolation in the Royal Cornwall Infirmary, Truro, Ian was moved by ambulance back to Essex, to Black Notley Hospital in Braintree, where he spent eighteen months regaining his strength and mobility. Polio caused paralysis on the left-hand side of his body which led to a permanent disability.
Ian attended Chailey Heritage Craft School, East Sussex, from 1951 till 1954. Chailey was a hospital school for disabled children that had an ethos of toughening up its students, often by leaving the less physically able to find their own way up off the floor. Arguably, this harsh approach contributed to the tough and determined person Dury became. Chailey taught trades such as cobbling and printing, but Dury's mother wanted him to focus on academic studies, so Aunt Moll (Mary Walker), a Buckinghamshire Education Officer, arranged for him to attend the Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe. Ian found this school a challenge and recounted being punished for misdemeanours by being forced by prefects to learn long tracts of poetry until a housemaster found him sobbing and put a stop to it:
I had to go into a box room where the suitcases were stored and learn 80 lines of Ode to Autumn by yer man Keats. If I got a word wrong I had to go back, they added that to the end of the sentence and after five nights of this my head had definitely gone.
He left school at 16, having achieved GCE 'O' levels in English Language, English Literature and Art to study art and design at Walthamstow College of Art, where he met lifelong friend, pop artist and teacher Peter Blake. In 1963 Ian began an MA in painting at the Royal College of Art, graduating in 1966.
In 1967 Dury took part in a group exhibition, "Fantasy and Figuration", alongside Elizabeth Rathmell, Pat Douthwaite, Herbert Kitchen and Stass Paraskos at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London.
Between 1966 and 1973 he was an art teacher at Luton College of Technology and at Canterbury College of Art. He also painted commercial illustrations for The Sunday Times in the early 1970s.
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