Black Country Road Transport

Black County Road Transport, by Jim Boulton. Alan Sutton Publications, Stroud, Glos, £7.99.

Jim Boulton is Wolverhampton’s transport historian, to the extent of a mural of him being unveiled recently in Wolverhampton Station. This is the very complete coverage of road transport in that area, by this ex-clerk, soldier, haulage contractor, and lorry driver. In the publisher’s “Britain In Old Photographs” series. The soft-cover 126-page book covers the lot — bicycles and horse-drawn vehicles, cars, motorcycles, ambulances, fire engines and commercial vehicles, Public Service vehicles (the colour cover depicts eight tiered seat, solid-tyred Guy charabancs in Wolverhampton Market Place in the 1920s), old garages and factories and competition scenes, from George Dance’s sprint Sunbeam motorcycle to the 200 mph Sunbeam car, 23 pictures in all, and I bet one caption may provide a fresh fact to even very clued-up STD folk. W B