Best Foot Forward SIMON MURRAY HAS CONQUERED DESERTS, MOUNTAINS and ICY WASTELANDS in HIS QUEST for ADVENTURE

Best Foot Forward SIMON MURRAY HAS CONQUERED DESERTS, MOUNTAINS AND ICY WASTELANDS IN HIS QUEST FOR ADVENTURE. HE TELLS SALLY ROBINSON ABOUT HIS LIFE LESS ORDINARY t’s late afternoon in Murray never really knew his father, who was the China Club’s top floor raised by his grandparents and lived a privileged library and, as the sun life between London’s Connaught Hotel (where his grandfather lived) and Claridge’s (where his sets over Hong Kong, grandmother had a suite). Murray’s father and Simon Murray is still mother were married in 1937, but his father going full-throttle. He abandoned the family when Murray was aged two. has spent the last hour “My mother put my brother and I into an orphanage, and went to work for the Fire Ivaulting sofas for our photo shoot, Brigade,” recalls Murray, who was then rescued but that’s nothing compared to the by an uncle on his father’s side. The uncle paid exertion he’s now recounting – his for the two boys to attend Bedford School in the AT A gruelling trek to the South Pole at UK. Meanwhile, his mother remarried a Dutch GLANCE man, and Murray spent his childhood travelling early memories the age of 64, making him the oldest between school and Holland. “Scientists say you person to ever complete the journey Murray has always followed the path less can’t remember anything before without support. “It took 58 days in ordinary. In 1958, at the age of 18, he was at the the age of one, temperatures of minus 50, pulling port of Rotterdam waiting for the ship that would but my first transport him back to school and his A-levels. memories are of 150 kilos in supplies,” he recalls. Instead, he signed up to become a galley boy on bombs going off. I “Nobody thought I would do it.” a 7,000-tonne tramp steamer about to sail for was born in March 1940 and Hitler But, of course, he did. Murray is nothing if not South America. “I told my mother I had a job on a began bombing determined. Part adventurer, part businessman, luxury yacht going to the Canary Islands, but really London in his formidable career has included a five-year I spent the next 10 months peeling spuds and September” stint in the French Foreign Legion, 14 years at scrubbing decks.” on hong kong Jardine Matheson in Asia, 10 years with Hutchison After he returned to England, he became “I love the people, the noise, Whampoa (where he started the mobile phone an apprentice at Manchester’s Mather & Platt, the bustle, the network that became Orange) and four years as an engineering company founded by his great- energy – and the executive chairman of the Deutsche Bank Group great-great-grandfather during the Industrial bravery and in Asia. He now runs his own Hong Kong-based Revolution. Murray recalls, “I worked on the shop determination” investment company, gems. floor in the ironmongery.” He hated the place, but regrets? “I had a house on In between all this, he has managed to climb fell for the chairman’s daughter Jennifer, who he The Peak, which I Mount Kilimanjaro, hike to Everest Base Camp, later married. After a failed attempt to join the sold for HK$38 take part in the Rolex China Sea Race and run army in the UK – and to get Jennifer to marry million. It is now the Marathon des Sables in addition to his trek to him – he left for Paris and signed up for the French worth HK$450 the South Pole. Although Murray has just turned Foreign Legion when he was 19. “Two weeks later, million. I should have held on to it” 72, he looks much younger: he’s quick-witted, I was on my way to Algeria,” he says. family ties energetic, entertaining and sharp as a tack. Murray’s five years in the Legion’s parachute He has been Born in 1940 to a military family on his father’s regiment were grim and testing. Based in edmon leong married to his side, his great-great-grandfather was in elite Algeria, he fought the Fellegah rebels who wife, Jennifer, for Scottish infantry regiment the Black Watch and sought independence from France. “It was a very 45 years; the couple has three was the senior surviving officer at the end of the closed five years,” he says. “I didn’t make one children and six Crimean War. His grandfather was one of the last telephone call. There were some tough guys there photography photography grandchildren two officers killed in World War I. – Germans, Italians, Spaniards. For the first two ■ hong kong tatler 30 july 2012 years I was the only Englishman in Not surprisingly, Murray rates the latter as my regiment. Physically, it was a huge one of his greatest achievements. The idea was endurance test. We would march up originally suggested by his wife, Jennifer (who in and down the mountains for six 2000 became the first female to circumnavigate or seven days at a time with rocks in the globe by helicopter, solo) and further our backpacks.” developed with adventurer Pen Hadow “over a The book he wrote about his few bottles of Bordeaux.” experience, Legionnaire, has sold Months of rigorous training followed – first over one million copies and has been on Dartmoor, in the depths of winter, to prove to translated into six languages. So, why Hadow he had what it took. Next, Murray spent did he sign up? Like many, he says he months dragging tractor tyres around rural France joined “to forget.” Looking back, Murray to prepare himself for 150 kilos of kit. credits the Legion with giving him the The trek itself was arduous, particularly ability to get along with people and a towards the end when Murray lost one of the deeper self-knowledge. “People say I runners from his sledge. For 30 days there was am my own man,” he says, and is a firm believer in nothing – just total whiteness. “When I was undertaking self-discovery. walking, I was just totally focused. It really was Murray arrived in Asia 45 years ago to work for tough,” he says. “It was about getting your mileage Jardine Matheson and was posted to Bangkok. He in and making it through the next hour.” How did recalls, “We lived in a tiny house in the middle of a he feel to finally arrive? “Terrific,” he says “but, as I paddy field, but Thailand was wonderful – it was so told a journalist from The Times, I never wanted to free compared to London, where everybody walked see another snowflake again.” around in bowler hats carrying an umbrella.” What’s next? Every September, Murray takes a He also feels that freedom in Hong Kong, the hiking holiday with friends – so far they’ve walked place he calls home. “I never wanted to work in the the hills around Syria, climbed Mount Kilimanjaro same place for 50 years. I like diversity. I like moving and reached Everest Base Camp. This year they around. There is a restlessness that takes over.” plan to hike in Algeria. Before that, though, he is THE EXPLORER That desire to keep moving certainly heading to the Olympics for something a bit less From Top Photographer contributed to his impressive list of outdoor strenuous when he attends the opening ceremony Martin Hartley adventures. But what’s particularly remarkable is on July 27. captures Murray that Murray’s biggest triumphs have occurred at Murray is a firm believer in putting yourself in the South Pole; an age when society expects you to slow down. In to the test. “You learn something about yourself a photo of 2000, at age 60, he completed the Marathon des through all these experiences,” he says. “It is about Murray in the French Foreign Sables, a 240km race across the Moroccan desert. limits and what you are capable of. If you don’t Legion from his Four years later, he undertook the 750km trek to attempt things, you will never know if you could personal collection the South Pole. have done them.” hong kong tatler 32 july 2012.

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