Book Review: The Motorist’s Bedside Book edited by Anthony Harding
I often read older motoring and motor racing books, but some show their age more than others. The Motorist’s Bedside Book feels like it’s from another age, when driving was more readily associated with adventure, skill and – occasionally – casual chauvinism, than it is today. But the good thing about a collection of essays is that if you don’t like the one you’re reading, there'll be another along in a minute.
This is the fourth in a sequence of “motoring symposia”, as the editor puts it, that began in 1960 with The Motorist’s Weekend Book. The 26 essays within are each by different writers, including all-time greats such as Paul Frère, Denis Jenkison and Cyril Posthumus. Also among them are two men with whom I worked at the very start of my career, both sadly no longer with us – Michael Scarlett and LJK Setright.
The topics covered range from straight historical accounts of the interwar Boulogne Races and Brooklands Five Hundred, to personal reminiscences of motoring adventures, to motorsport stories about José Froilàn González and the Autodromo di Monza. There’s even a selection of Brockbank cartoons, which were a childhood favourite of mine.
Two of the best are Ronald Barker’s Motoring Nights – recounting some of his adventures on roads after dark, very few of which would be repeatable today – and Anthony Bird’s Air on a Shoe-String, about running prewar cars on next-to-no money.
The writing might be a little old-fashioned for some readers and you have to keep in mind the era in which these essays were written. But for me, the appeal of the book is that the events depicted in the stories wouldn’t happen today, and the writers who recorded them are long gone. At its best, The Motorist’s Bedside Book is an enjoyable document of a bygone era, written by the people that experienced it first-hand.
The Motorist’s Bedside Book
edited by Anthony Harding
Batsford, 1972. ISBN 0-7134-0470-1
Find it on eBay
This is the fourth in a sequence of “motoring symposia”, as the editor puts it, that began in 1960 with The Motorist’s Weekend Book. The 26 essays within are each by different writers, including all-time greats such as Paul Frère, Denis Jenkison and Cyril Posthumus. Also among them are two men with whom I worked at the very start of my career, both sadly no longer with us – Michael Scarlett and LJK Setright.
The topics covered range from straight historical accounts of the interwar Boulogne Races and Brooklands Five Hundred, to personal reminiscences of motoring adventures, to motorsport stories about José Froilàn González and the Autodromo di Monza. There’s even a selection of Brockbank cartoons, which were a childhood favourite of mine.
Two of the best are Ronald Barker’s Motoring Nights – recounting some of his adventures on roads after dark, very few of which would be repeatable today – and Anthony Bird’s Air on a Shoe-String, about running prewar cars on next-to-no money.
The writing might be a little old-fashioned for some readers and you have to keep in mind the era in which these essays were written. But for me, the appeal of the book is that the events depicted in the stories wouldn’t happen today, and the writers who recorded them are long gone. At its best, The Motorist’s Bedside Book is an enjoyable document of a bygone era, written by the people that experienced it first-hand.
The Motorist’s Bedside Book
edited by Anthony Harding
Batsford, 1972. ISBN 0-7134-0470-1
Find it on eBay