Today would have been the 100th birthday of my father Gareth Morris - who had a life as rich and remarkable as any of the historical figures I usually write about.

From the moment he first picked up a flute he knew that he wanted to play it professionally. He left school in his early teens and studied privately with Robert Murchie, then the principal flute of the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

In 1938 he was awarded a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music, where in his first year he won the John Solomon Prize for wind players. Here he is as a student playing the solo part in Bach's B minor suite. The conductor is Sir Henry Wood, founder of the @bbcproms.

In 1939, aged 19, he was invited to join the RAF Symphony Orchestra. This ensemble was an expansion of the existing RAF Central Band, and at a time when most orchestras had shut down for the duration of hostilities it included many of the leading London players.

In 1945 the RAF Symphony Orchestra gave a concert at the Potsdam Conference. My father saw Churchill and Stalin strolling on the grass together! To his lasting regret he missed the final banquet because he had to fly back to London to play a concerto with Georges Enescu.

My father actually met Churchill, when he was invited to give a flute recital at 10 Downing Street in the early 1950s. Churchill approached him afterwards and they chatted, but my father was so terrified that he could barely remember a word that was said!

He also played at the Coronation in 1953 - he is fleetingly visible in the official film of the occasion, sitting perched high above the congregation, close to the conductor Sir Adrian Boult.

From 1948 he was also principal flute of the @philharmonia orchestra, founded by Walter Legge - part of a 'royal flush' of wind players that also included the great horn player Dennis Brain and clarinettist Frederick Thurston.

They played under some of the leading conductors of the day, including several years recording and touring with Herbert von Karajan, pictured here at the Lucerne Festival in 1954...

...and Toscanini's only post-war concerts in the UK - given in the newly completed Royal Festival Hall in 1952.

He played a great deal of contemporary music and gave world or UK premieres of works by composers including Stravinsky, Martinu, Honegger, and Francis Poulenc - including the latter's celebrated flute sonata, with the composer at the piano.

In 1965 he even played Igor Stravinsky's masterpiece The Rite of Spring under the baton of the composer himself - in a concert televised by the BBC.

He also played on hundreds of film soundtracks - including many of the great Ealing comedies of the late 40s and 50s. A family highlight, however, is Chitty Chitty Bang Bang - in which my father is the sound of the Toot Sweet!