Walter Clement Noel was famous in the wrong circles for the wrong reasons. He died in Grenada in 1916 aged just 32. Over fifty years later, in the first decade of my life, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was far and away my favourite film. I must have seen it six or seven times, a huge tally in the days before VCRs and DVDs. The magical tale of endangered children rescued with the help of a flying car captivated my boyish mind.