Bob Leakey

Robert Dove Leakey (23 June 1914 – 22 April 2013) was an inventor, potholer and cave diver. He has been described as the "Edmund Hillary of potholing". He stood for Parliament in 2005 and 2010; he is thought to be the oldest candidate ever in a UK general election, shortly before his 96th birthday in May 2010.

Leakey was born in Kenya, where his father (Arundell) Gray Leakey was a farmer. Through his great-grandfather James Shirley Leakey, one of the eleven children of the portrait painter James Leakey, he is related to the missionary Rev Henry Leakey, and so to his son and grandson the paleoanthropologists Louis Leakey and Richard Leakey.

His older brother Nigel Leakey was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross in 1945, for his actions in Ethiopia in 1941. Another relative Joshua Leakey was awarded the Victoria Cross in 2015, for his actions in Afghanistan in 2013. His younger brother Rea Leakey survived service in the Second World War, and became a major-general in the British Army. His sister Agnes Leakey (later Agnes Hofmeyr) worked for reconciliation in Kenya.

He was educated in Kenya and then at Weymouth College. He then studied at the Chelsea College of Aeronautical Engineering, and worked for Vickers.

While working as an aircraft designer in the Second World War, a reserved occupation, he discovered the 9 kilometres (5.6 mi) long Mossdale Caverns north of Grassington in the Yorkshire Dales.

He was called up for military service in 1942, the year after his brother Nigel was killed in action, and served as a paratrooper in India and Burma. He failed in two attempts to become the first person to climb the 6,316 metres (20,722 ft) Bandarpunch in the Himalayas.

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