"Motoring and the Mighty"

By Richard Garrett. 219 pp. 8 4/5 in. x 5 1/5 in. (Stanley Paul, 3, Fitzroy Square, London, W. 1. £1.95.)
In this book, readable but of no lasting significance, the author has put some of the more dramatic consequences of the motor car under the headings of those who were involved therein. Some of the material seems new—there are intimate details of how T. E. Lawrence met his end, after falling off his Brough-Superior motorcycle—the text of the telegram he sent just prior to this is garbled, in the book—but much of it comes from existing sources. The chapter containing the memories of Lord Ironside’s chauffeur are worth having but too often Garrett has a morbid obsession with death—bringing Mike Hawthorn, Bormann, Birkin, Zborowski and others into his book on this pretext that they died in or hear to motor vehicles. I would have liked what I found better had the author not put Lou Zborowski into a Mercedes in the 1924 French Grand Prix, whereas the point was that in that race Zborowski and S. C. H. Davis had a hectic time in a straight-8 Miller because it was unsuited to road racing.—W. B.