Christopher HUDSON

Although he was born in England, and died in Scotland, Sydney Hudson spent the greater part of his life outside the United Kingdom. He was educated and brought up in Switzerland, where his father was a businessman. Not surprisingly, the young Sydney was a good skier from an early age, and was also a good quality tennis player and golfer. In the 1930s he shared his time between the ski slopes of Switzerland in the winter months and the Royal Eastbourne Golf Club in spring and summer, where he played off scratch. Hudson was runner-up in the Sussex Amateur Championship three times (1931-32, 1934), and in 1932 reached the fifth round of the British Open Amateur Championship. Around the same time, Hudson was also making a name for himself on the ski slopes at Mürren, alongside his future Great Britain team-mate Peter Lunn. Of the two, however, it was Hudson who was a British champion, winning both the downhill and combined in 1933. He made his Great Britain début in the 1934 International races at Sankt Moritz, and remained on the team until 1936, when he was vice-captain of the team at the Olympics. He won the coveted Kandahar Cup prior to the Garmisch-Partenkirchen Games. Hudson’s future wife Joan, who he married in 1938, was also a member of the British skiing team.

Prior to the outbreak of World War II, Hudson won the 1939 Swiss Open Amateur Golf Championship. Shortly afterwards, he returned to England and was commissioned into the Royal Fusiliers, but soon became a Special Operation Executive (SOE), working with the French Resistance. He was arrested and sent to a camp near Toulouse but eventually escaped and made his way via Spain, to Gibraltar, and then back to England. He returned to France shortly afterwards and then saw service with the SOE in the Far East. Hudson rose to the rank of lieutenant-colonel and received a DSO with Bar, and was honoured with the French Croix de Guerre.

In 1953 he joined the human resources division of Shell International, working in Trinidad and the United States, amongst other places. Rather than take up a post in Vietnam in 1969, he moved to Scotland and joined the Bank of Scotland, helping them with training and development. He was also a representative on the Scottish Council of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), and later chairman of CBI Scotland. Hudson retired in 1980 but, following the formation of the new British political party, the Social Democratic Party (SDP), he played an active role in establishing the party in Scotland. Two years before his death, Hudson wrote a book entitled Undercover Operator, which told of his exploits with the SOE.