Torquil Norman

Torquil Patrick Alexander Norman
Born	1933 (age 83–84)
Nationality	British
Occupation	Businessman

Sir Torquil Patrick Alexander Norman, CBE (born 1933) is a British businessman, aircraft enthusiast, and arts philanthropist.

An Old Etonian, graduate of Harvard and of Trinity College, Cambridge, he stands 6' 7". Sir Torquil gained his pilot’s licence at eighteen, did National Service in the Fleet Air Arm. When he left bought a Piper Comanche, flew in No. 601 Squadron RAF, and took up skydiving, a passion shared by his wife, Lady Anne née Montagu.

After working as an investment banker in the United States for eleven years, he returned to the UK in the 1960s and subsequently entered the toymaking industry, first as chief executive of Berwick Timpo toy company from 1973, and then in 1980 founding Bluebird Toys, makers of the Big Yellow Teapot House, the Big Red Fun Bus, and the very successful Polly Pocket line of dolls.

A long-term Camden resident, he bought the derelict Roundhouse arts venue in Chalk Farm for £3 million in 1996 "as an impulse buy", having read it was proposed to turn it into an architectural museum. As founder and chairman of the Roundhouse Trust he then raised £27 million from public and private sources, including almost £4 million more of his own personal funds, to restore the crumbling Victorian former railway repair shed, which had been a major arts venue in the 1960s and '70s.

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