Description

ln 1974, Mrs Bruce was roaring round Thruxton racetrack at up to I I0 m.p.h. She was then 78.

The interest this aroused has led Mrs Bruce to explain how it came about, and she does so in her remarkable life-story, Nine Lives Plus. Her performance at Thruxton is but one more event in a life full of exciting adventures and daring escapades.

At the age of 15, she was the first girl to appear before a court on a charge of speeding (at 67 m.p.h. on her elder brother’s motor-cycle). At an early age she had determined to enter the world of competitive driving and, entering an AC in the I927 Monte Carlo Rally, she won the Coupe des Dames.

She raced at Brooklands against, amongst others, Frazer-Nash, and took a touring car two hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle. Her exploits were not limited to land, since she set a record for a double crossing of the Channel in an outboard, and in 1930 flew her tiny Bluebird aircraft single-handed to Japan.

She took part in the first air-to-air refuelling in Britain, and her company did contract work for the Air Ministry. She relates all these adventures in a narrative with humour an detail, and also describes something of the family background: her great-grand mother fought off Indians in mid-West America, and her mother was a Shakespearean actress who also played the ukelele.

Mrs Bruce is a first-class raconteuse, and her story is one of spirit and courage. The many photographs bear out how much she was a pioneer, at a time when it was particularly unusual that a woman should undertake such challenges.

Hardback in very good condition, very light tanning to page edges. Dust jacket also clean and virtually unmarked.