Cars in books, February 1982

Browse pages
Current page

1

Current page

2

Current page

3

Current page

4

Current page

5

Current page

6

Current page

7

Current page

8

Current page

9

Current page

10

Current page

11

Current page

12

Current page

13

Current page

14

Current page

15

Current page

16

Current page

17

Current page

18

Current page

19

Current page

20

Current page

21

Current page

22

Current page

23

Current page

24

Current page

25

Current page

26

Current page

27

Current page

28

Current page

29

Current page

30

Current page

31

Current page

32

Current page

33

Current page

34

Current page

35

Current page

36

Current page

37

Current page

38

Current page

39

Current page

40

Current page

41

Current page

42

Current page

43

Current page

44

Current page

45

Current page

46

Current page

47

Current page

48

Current page

49

Current page

50

Current page

51

Current page

52

Current page

53

Current page

54

Current page

55

Current page

56

Current page

57

Current page

58

Current page

59

Current page

60

Current page

61

Current page

62

Current page

63

Current page

64

Current page

65

Current page

66

Current page

67

Current page

68

Current page

69

Current page

70

Current page

71

Current page

72

Current page

73

Current page

74

Current page

75

Current page

76

Current page

77

Current page

78

Current page

79

Current page

80

Current page

81

Current page

82

Current page

83

Current page

84

Current page

85

Current page

86

Current page

87

Current page

88

Current page

89

Current page

90

Current page

91

Current page

92

Current page

93

Current page

94

Current page

95

Current page

96

Current page

97

Current page

98

Current page

99

Current page

100

Current page

101

Current page

102

Current page

103

Current page

104

Current page

105

Current page

106

Current page

107

Current page

108

Current page

109

Current page

110

Current page

111

Current page

112

Current page

113

Current page

114

Current page

115

Current page

116

Current page

117

Current page

118

Current page

119

Current page

120

Current page

121

Current page

122

In “The Hall In The Field” by Margaret Evans (Hodder & Stoughton, 1978), about running an ancient manor house in North Wales as an hotel at a date unspecified but atter World War Two. there is a reference to some visitors arriving in an Alvis. But this may not plase members of the Alvis OC or the Alvis Register, because the authoress says that “this elderly car was surely the most fragile motor ever to negotiate our hill…”! Other cars mentioned are the local doctors small Austin and another visitor’s “opulent Royce”, in which he carried a scooter in the boot for getting to the local golf-course, leaving the Rover for his wife.

On a more serious note there are many parallels with the present dav in the political happenings and opinions about the future in “Harold Nicholson’s Diaries — 1930-1964” by the famous author and publisher who became a Labour MP in the hope of receiving a peerage. The book is obviously meticulously edited by Stanley Olson (Collins, 1980). The author was no motorist, so all we glean about cars is that H. Nicholson was asked in the summer of 1939, with war imminent, whether his “…Buick would take an 8 ft. stretcher or only sitting cases and corpses.” Although he quite frequently met the King and Mrs. Simpson he was unlikely, I think, to have been influenced by them in his choice of car.

Lloyd George is likened by 1943 to an old Rolls-Royce backfiring and spluttering (do they?), and after the abdication it was suggested that the Duke of Windsor would make an admirable Rolls-Royce representative, except that an ex-King could not start to sell motor cars. In December, 1947, a “lovely hire Daimler” took Nicholson to a party at Buckingham Palace and the car, described “my huge Daimler”, was in use in London in 1950. There is a later reference to it – “I sailed off magnificent and outrageous in my Daimler” – in 1954 and mention of the Daimler ambulance which took Nicholson’s wife (Vita Sackville-West) from the hospital in Canonbury to their home, Sittinghurst Castle, in Kent in 1962, and to a Daimler driving them to a station en route for sailing to New York in the Queen Mary in 1963. I have a feeling that these cars may have been from Daimler Hire and advocates of the make may like to speculate about which models they would have been. W.B.