Cars in books, December 1961

display_5689f27b5a

There is reference in “Daughters of Divinity,” by Verily Anderson (Hart-Davis, 1960), to a model-T Ford in which her mother takes her to school oblivious of the social stigma it causes, and to the new Ford (model-A?) in which Verily is met when due to leave this eccentric girls’ school in Sussex, after she has incurred every bad mark possible, ending up with being birched by the headmistress, but later forgiven and promoted to prefect, and there is brief mention of the headmistress’ chauffeur-driven yellow Daimler. There is another, brief reference to the libel case which centred round the Dieppe motor week of 1908 in “Back View,” by Sir Harold Morris, Q.C., (Peter Davies, 1960) and an account of a tour of Iceland in 1932 in a Buick saloon which penetrated places where no car had been before, in “Laughing Diplomat,” by Daniele Varè (Murray, 1938).

Turning to fiction, which I read less often than autobiography, all manner of cars figure in one of the stories in “A Sociable Plover,” by Eric Linklater (Hart-Davis, 1957)—1930 Rolls-Royce, Austin Healey, small Morris, a police car, all of which are involved in unexpected adventures in the Scottish Highlands.—W. B.