Lives in Cricket No 38 - Lionel Robinson

20 The early life of Lionel Robinson During the Great War, W.S. worked for the Australian Prime Minister, Billy Hughes, but, when Lionel did not come out of retirement after the war, W.S. resumed business and threw in his lot with his friends and partners in the Baillieu family. Although based in London from 1916, he spent much of his time in Australia and went on to become a businessman and industrialist of global significance. He reached the height of his powers during the Second World War and, in his latter years, helped to establish the Australian aluminium and uranium industries. Unlike Lionel, W.S. was not interested in making money per se but was rather motivated to set up and control a worldwide business empire. In his memoirs (which were published posthumously in 1967 and titled If I Remember Rightly ) he stated, with justification, that: ‘I built up...the friendship and goodwill of a great body of workers in Australia and the UK and in the Far East, plus a host of people engaged in finance, commerce and industry in Britain, the Continent, the East and the United States.’ 21 W.S. has been described as ‘an imposing but genial figure ...with a disconcertingly mild manner, he could nevertheless exhibit strong temper when crossed’. His death in 1963 made front page news in the Australian press; Lord Chandos, who had been Minister of Production in Churchill’s war cabinet, described him as: ‘the most completely equipped businessman I have known ... on the broader aspects of economics and monetary thought he had an originality of thought far in advance of his times’. 21 In his memoirs, W.S. also remembered both being paid ‘the princely sum of a gold half sovereign’ to wash Lionel’s pet hound when a boy and his surprise at the severity of the weather in a Norfolk winter when he paid his older brother a visit. W.S Robinson, Lionel’s illustrious brother and business associate (courtesy of Old Scotch Collegians’ Association)