The Magic of a Name

By Peter Pugh ISBN 1-84046-151-9

Published by Icon Books UK, £30.00

I can still remember how enthralled I was to read Harold Nockolds’ Magic of a Name, the first proper history of the Rolls-Royce motor car, back in 1938, with its inset colour plates by Roy Nockolds. Since then innumerable books about Rolls-Royce, and

R-R-built Bentley cars, have flooded the market from various publishers. Most are magnificent, which is how R-R owners regard their cars, but for me the only indispensable follow up has been The Rolls-Royzx Motor Carby Anthony Bird and Ian Hallows, backed up by John Fasg’s essential The Rolls-Royce Tweny, and The Edwardian Rolls-Royce.

Now we have yet another contribution to the history of “The World’s Best Car”, using the same name as Nockold’s great work, but it is actually a completely new book Embracing the Company’s first 40 years and all its great and memorable achievements in the field of aviation engines and many other top technological advances and triumphs, it should become as essential to R-R history as the ones I have named from the past — and just what this once so-British company so fully deserves.

This volume, so well researched and written, takes us from the marque’s birth up until 1945; the next will continue the story. WB