Flying High: The Violet and Leslie Cliff Story

Photo courtesy National Archives Of Poland

The youngest of Helen (Morrison) and Grosvenor Talbot Cliff's three sons, Leslie Howard Talbot Cliff was born June 5, 1908, in The Curragh, County Kildare, Island. He grew up at Grasmere House, a stately home in Aldershot, which employed two nurses, two housemaids and a groom. Violet  'Vita' May Hamilton Supple was born on November 2, 1916 in Bath. Her parents, who hailed from Ireland originally, were May Josephine Violet (Samler) and William Hamilton Supple.

Violet and Leslie's fathers had much in common. Both were army men who served in the Second Boer War and fought on the front lines during The Great War. Violet's father, a Lieutenant Colonel, had served with the Royal Dublin Fusiliers but returned home from Gallipoli injured. Leslie's father was killed in the line of duty while serving with the 3rd (Prince Of Wales) Dragoon Guards.

Photo courtesy Frazer Ormondroyd

Leslie was an athletic young man who excelled in steeplechase riding and lawn tennis. He first took up skating as a young law student. He met Violet at the Westover Ice Rink in Bournemouth and the two soon formed a partnership... both on and off the ice. After placing third in their first bid for the British pairs title and second in a waltzing contest at the Westminster Ice Club, they claimed their first of six consecutive national pairs titles in 1934. They were quietly married the following spring.

Throughout the thirties, Violet and Leslie were, without question, the UK's most successful pairs team. They won the silver medal at the 1936 European Championships and twice won the bronze medal at the World Championships. Though they 'only' placed seventh at the 1936 Winter Olympic Games in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, one judge had them as high as third. Eminent British skater, judge and writer T.D. Richardson once wrote, "The pairs skating of Mr. and Mrs. Cliff is distinguished by a splendid togetherness, one of the great essentials of good pair skating. Their programme is always a delight to watch as it is performed with excellent speed [and] impeccable accuracy and charm, while their timing is beyond reproach."

As compared to their other, more adventurous hobby, skating perhaps seemed a little genteel to some. In 1930, Leslie earned his flying certificate at the Cinque Ports Flying Club, which operated out of the Lympne Airport in Kent. A regular at the airport at the time was the Duchess Of Bedford, who had been the patroness of Prince's Skating Club many years prior and had taken up flying in her sixties.
Leslie soon began working as a flying instructor and took Violet along for the ride as a passenger in several air races. As a pair in the air, they finished third in the famous cross-country King's Cup Air Race in 1938. They planned to enter again in 1939, flying in a Miles Hawk plane owned by Cecilia Colledge's family, but the race was cancelled by the Royal Aero Club at the eleventh hour. World War II broke out within weeks. BIS historian Elaine Hooper recalled, "Notably, in atrocious weather, on King George VI’s Coronation Day [in 1937], they flew press photographs and cinema footage of the coronation to Yorkshire, to enable newspapers in the county to be first to publish the photographs in the north. In fact, cinemas in Hull were showing the film by 10 pm that evening, all thanks to Leslie and Vita."

Leslie Cliff. Right photo courtesy Archives of the Royal Aero Club, A Fleeting Peace: Golden-Age Aviation In The British Empire.

During World War II, Leslie served as a Squadron Leader with the Royal Air Force, earning the Air Force Cross for his "valour, courage or devotion to duty whilst flying". His obituary noted, "The summer of 1939 found Leslie Cliff at Sywell, instructing at the RAF EFTS there. Later he volunteered as a night fighter pilot on Beaufighters. When it was discovered that he had been a civil instructor with twin experience, he was retained as an instructor, training pilots for night fighting. Towards the end of the War, he was sent to Robertsfield, Liberia, for anti-submarine duties." He mourned the loss of his 1936 Olympic teammate Freddie Tomlins, who perished in the summer of 1943 on a flight over the English Channel but delighted at the birth of he and Violet's son, born that same year in North Berwick.

Photo courtesy Frazer Ormondroyd

Like Cecilia Colledge, Henry Graham Sharp and a handful of other British pre-war champions, Leslie and Violet returned to the skating world after World War II ended. Having had little time to prepare for the 1946 British Championships, they finished second to the sibling pair of Winnie and Dennis Silverthorne. 

After the competition, Violet and Leslie opted to retire from the skating world and moved to Le Mont Gras D'eau, St. Brelade, on the island of Jersey in the Channel Islands.

Leslie passed away in Jersey on August 2, 1969, at the age of sixty-one and Violet returned to England, remarrying to John Moore in October of 1974. She passed away in Andover, Hampshire on March 26, 2003, at the age of eighty-six.

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