Interview with Ken Adam

Ken Adam was born in Berlin, Germany to a Jewish family. His family moved to England in 1934, when Adam was 13 years old, and then went to St. Paul's School in Barnes. Later, he attended University College London, training to be an architect. Although he was still a German national, he served as a pilot for the Royal Air Force during World War II, where he flew the Hawker Typhoon on many missions over NW Europe. This was a brave move: if he had been shot down and captured, instead of being sent to a prisoner of war camp, the Germans would have been able to hang him as a traitor. Adam was the only German national to be an RAF fighter pilot. He was later naturalised as a British citizen and was knighted in 2003 by Queen Elizabeth II.