Description

A wide range of articles from luminaries such as Osbert Sitwell, C S Rolls, Lord Montagu and Laurence Pomeroy.

Over more than half a century the motor car has increasingly dominated our lives, widening our horizons, shortening our tempers, enflaming our passions for change and speed, spoiling our country-side, destroying our cities, creating its own cults and forever standing as a rebuke to our fickleness and materialism. Above all the motor car is a creator of memories, every stage in its brief and bedevilled history being redolent with nostalgia.

This, unashamedly, is a pot pourri of nostalgia, for those who still love motoring, in spite of everything, and for those who once loved it. Sir Osbert Sitwell evokes Edwardian motoring, Lady Jeaune guides the ladies of 1902 on dress and comportment for the horseless carriage, Charles Rolls himself warns of the capricious motor car before he combined his talents with Henry Royce to produce the least capricious of all automobiles.

There are tales of the roads when they were still blessedly one’s own, of steam cars, of cars that grew into giants and others that unaccountably withered away. There are others that touch on motoring controversies that shook the motoring firmament—or only the local police court; and another of a murderous James Bond pursuit down the Dover Road. There is solid wisdom on technical development, a revelation on early American auto racing, and there are William Morris and Moore-Brabazon arguing about the new ‘baby Rolls’.

Here is a companion for every reading mood; and some fifty delightful pictures for non-readers. Nice copy of an interesting book. Bargain!!

1965 first edition. Hardback in excellent condition. Dust jacket fair, with some scuffs and tears and marks to top of spine and cover – otherwise clean.