Brooklands

This is a definitive history of the world's first purpose built motor racing course. The author first visited the famous Brooklands Motor Course as a youngster in the 1920s and quickly became a fixture at the track, which a wealthy landowner had built in 1907 and on which motor racing and motor industry testing was to take place through to 1939, when World War II brought it all to a halt. Much of the land was then given over to aviation, then to industrial development, but parts of the historic track still survive, along with many restored and refurbished buildings steeped in motor racing history. Today they form a backcloth to the many activities staged by motor clubs in the South East of England and to the newly created Brooklands Museum, which is devoted to both motorsports and aviation. The editor of the magazine "Motor Sport" for more than half a century, Bill Boddy felt the loss of Brooklands to motor racing very deeply and was moved to write its definitive history, which has been long out of print but forms the basis for this completely new edition, incorporating extensive revisions and new material, and is now being issued by Motor Racing Publications as a limited edition collector's item. A quantity of the illustrations which appeared in the previous edition have been used again, but they have been augmented by many more, for which the publishers are grateful to both the Brooklands Museum and the Brooklands Society for access to their respective archives. No library of motor racing history can be complete without the inclusion of a book which pays due tribute to what many would regard as the most significant race track of them all. For it was Brooklands, thanks to the generosity of landowner Hugh Locke King, which began it all, and it was its early success which inspired people in the USA to build Indianapolis and for Europe's motorsports drivers, from international stars to unknown novices, to use it week after week for their racing and record-breaking activities.