PastImperfect/The Bear:Born at Nelson on the north island of New Zealand in 1936, Denis Clive Hulme was the son of a winner of the Victoria Cross.
His father Clive ran a trucking business and the young Denis - invariably known as 'Denny' - learned to drive on six-ton lorries as a schoolboy. At 18 Denny went to work in a local garage repairing bulldozers and demonstrating his capacity for hard work.
He saved enough to purchase a new MG TF which was to be his first step in competition. Having joined a local motor club he began to take part in events over the next few years before replacing the TF with an MGA before this was traded in for a 2.0-litre Cooper which had been raced by Bruce McLaren. Denny's first race with the Cooper was the 1960 New Zealand Grand Prix where he shared the back row of the grid of his heat with Jack Brabham.
Just when it looked as if Denny was about to score a famous victory the gearbox of the Cooper jammed and he was out.
At that time New Zealand motorsport supported a 'Driver to Europe Scholarship' and Denny was the joint winner in 1960 with George Lawton.
Denny made an immediate impression in his first race in Europe at Brands Hatch.
Not by his racing, but by climbing into his Formula 2 Cooper in his bare feet just as he had always raced in his bare feet in New Zealand.
Despite this start, Denny put in a string of good results which led to his making his Formula 1 debut in one of the Yeoman Credit Coopers at Snetterton. In only the 29th race of his career, Denny finished 5th, behind Ireland, Clark, Bonner and Salvadori.
In many ways this was the true starting point of an illustrious career that would take him to victory in eight Grand Prix and to the 1967 World Driver's Championship, when he drove a Brabham BT20 Repco V8.
Typically, when he won the 1967 World Championship, Denny jokingly asked Jim Clark if he would do the "fame bit" for him as he had such a dislike for fame and all the attendant attention.
By this time Denny had been nicknamed The Bear, from his dismissive attitude to journalists who intruded into what he thought of as his privacy and personal time and who would ask "silly questions".
In 1969 Denny switched to the McLaren team run by his friend and fellow Kiwi Bruce McLaren. As well as competing in Grand Prix racing McLaren also raced their cars in the CanAm series of sports car races in America.
Some of the most powerful and spectacular racing cars ever produced, Denny took to the CanAm cars like the proverbial duck to water, winning the 1968 and 1970 championships. B
ut also in 1970, Denny's friend McLaren was killed in a testing accident at Goodwood, leaving Denny to lead the team until his retirement at the end of the 1974 season.
Despite retirement, Denny was a regular entry in the annual Bathhurst 1,000km race in Australia and it was there in the 1992 race that he suffered a fatal heart attack while racing a BMW. The Bear - one of the most under-rated of modern grand prix drivers, was just 56 years of age.