Book reviews, July 1983, July 1983

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Vintage Lorry Album Number Three — Seventy Years of Road Transport in Stories & Photos. Edited by Nick Baldwin. 96 pp. 12″ x 81/2″ (Frederick Warne Ltd., 40 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3HE. £7.95.)

This is an unusual but attractive offering, unusual because it is produced exactly as if Old Motor had never ceased production. The format follows that of the defunct journal and the pictures and their captions are in the same style; even comments and corrections concerning the previous volume are included, as they might be for a magazine appearing at regular intervals.

The quality of the paper and photographs is superb but the contents are naturally rather specialised, so far as our readers are concerned. Those who are turned on by commercial vehicles, however, will find the field dealt with wide-ranging, and I was especially interested in the long account of the Bairn Company — remember those lengthened, chain-drive Model-T and Model TT Ford conversions? — and the recollections of old-time lorry operation by Les Sober. Therein also a delightful picture of the solid-tyred Trojan van used by Durban & Allwright of Turnham Green Terrace, Chiswick, photographed outside this provisions store in the 1920s, when the best butter cost 1/7d. a pound. Bristol commercial vehicles have a long article to themselves, etc. — WB.