Antony Barrington-Brown, one of the pioneering team behind the First Overland expedition in 1955-1956, and his wife Althea have been killed in a car accident in Wiltshire.

Known as 'BB', Antony was born in 1927 and after three years' army service in Egypt, went to Cambridge to study chemistry in 1948.

In the early 1950s he became part of the Oxford and Cambridge Far Eastern Expedition, a hugely ambitious trip for it's time and which famously used a pair of specially-adapted Series One Station Wagons, prepared by Rover at Solihull. The BBC were approached and David Attenborough duly commissioned a film account of the trip, which was broadcast as part of their Traveller's Tales series. 'BB', an extremely keen freelance photographer, was the trip cameraman.

The trip was set to become one of the longest of all overland journeys, running as it did from Hyde Park in London all the way to Singapore.

Several expeditions had already tried. Some had got as far as the deserts of Persia; a few had even reached the plains of India. But no-one had managed to go on from there: over the jungle-clad mountains of Assam and across northern Burma to Thailand and Malaya. In late 1955, they set off. Six months, six days and 18,000 miles later, two very weary Land Rovers rolled into Singapore to the awaiting press and plenty of champagne. And then, of course, they had to come back.

A book, First Overland, written by trip companion Tim Slessor was published in 1957 and became an instant classic. The tales of derring-do and camaraderie, coupled with BB's wonderfully evocative photography inspired generations of travellers and Land Rover enthusiasts to head off on their own adventures. The original BBC films of the trip, broadcast in the late 1950s, were largely forgotten for 50 years until a chance meeting led to BB's original footage being digitally remastered and put onto DVD by enthusiast and film maker Graeme Aldous. The First Overland DVD was accompanied by a reprint of Tim Slessor's book and a BBC documentary, giving a whole new generation a chance to see what Sir David Attenborough called "classics of their kind".

BB worked in Cambridge as a freelance photographer until 1958. He later worked for the well-known shelving company Dexion Ltd, inventing the 'Speedframe' construction system seen in many workshops and warehouses. In 1967 he moved to Wiltshire, starting a company that designed and manufactured school and industrial furniture. Happily married to Althea, after retirement they designed and built their own house for an incredibly low overall cost, winning many plaudits from experts for the highly individual and determined approach to their self build. He kept a keen interest in photography and was a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society.

ruk.ca

Antony Barrington-Brown, 1927 - 2012