Raleigh Light Roadster

My grandfather’s bike was a classic for the masses

- David Bradford

"My ambitions have always been very modest, which is perhaps a blessing,” wrote my grandfather Richard Wicker shortly after World War Two, reflecting on happier times after five years as a POW in Germany. “I remember my very first: to own a bicycle.”

That earliest dream was realised as a schoolboy: after thriftily saving “150 weeks of Saturday’s penny in a tin box” he bought a “second-hand lady’s machine with a larger front wheel than rear”. An unlikely dream machine whose allure couldn’t last.