Cars in books, April 1983

A reader informs us that there is further reference to the Bugatti racing driver Charles William-Grover and his work for the French resistance movement during WW2 (he died in Sashsarhausen prison without breaking or giving information, apparently) and of Robert Benoist and his brother Maurice, in the same circumstances (Benoist being air-lifted to England before returning twice to France, to disappear in the Buchenwald prison camp) will be found in “Flight Most Secret” by Gibb McCall, which covers the work of No. 161 Squadron, RAF.

The Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Adelaide has drawn our attention to “Tony Crosland” by Susan Crosland (Cape), in which book Crosland’s great interest in motor racing is mentioned, when he was at Highgate, his mother giving him a secondhand MG before he went up to Oxford, which he named “Red Menace”. Shortly after he was elected Labour MP for South Gloucestershire, in 1950, Crosland stayed the night with two of his constituents, Lord and Lady Donaldson, who asked him what he would like to be if he were not a politician. “A racing-driver”, Crosland replied. . . . — W.B.