Cut off from the world; how Motor Sport’s legendary correspondent still filed on time

Letter from Europe July 1968

Motor Sport’s famed continental correspondent Denis Jenkinson – or ‘DSJ’ as he was known in these pages – famously sent his account of the 1955 Mille Miglia, arguably the greatest report in our sport’s history, by post from Italy to the magazine’s London office. Incredibly, he had made no copy of it.

Thirteen years later, with France in the midst of social unrest and political protest, ‘Jenks’ simply went on another long drive following the 1968 Monaco Grand Prix – albeit ‘only’ half the length of his victorious marathon with Stirling Moss and Mercedes-Benz – to deliver his copy.

“Being in France on the day the strikes began was an odd experience, with no telephones, telegrams or post, and the only way to contact the outside world was to drive to a frontier,” he related in his Letter from Europe. “As the one-day strike was still going on next day, and was obviously going to go on, there was nothing to do but drive 500 miles to Belgium in order to make a phone call.

“I remember having to do the same thing about 1953 when there was a postal and telephone strike and I was at a race at Sables d’Olonne on the Atlantic coast. This meant a very long drive to Switzerland in order to phone base, in those days in an old Fiat, which took quite a time to cover the ground.”

Due to the 1968 strikes, the upcoming Le Mans 24 Hours had already been postponed until September. Some suggested that it shouldn’t go ahead at all, DSJ saying this was “mostly on the grounds of unsettled weather, longer hours of darkness and the possibility of longer periods of mist”. But he added that some manufacturers were keen for the race to happen, singling out Porsche, which “must feel that it is their big chance of overall victory, which might not arise again”. Well, he didn’t quite get that one right!

Jenks was also sniffy about the exotic cars that had been on display in Monaco’s Casino Square over the grand prix weekend, suggesting that “there were so many [Lamborghini] Miuras that you practically fell over them and hardly bothered to look at them”, and describing the marque’s new Espada as “a vast and gormless device”.

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On this month… Seatbelts, Jackie’s F1 speedo and little Hill

Datsun Deceit

February 1970
Datsun gets a slap for its misleading ad “How come that lady’s driving the winner of the Safari Rally?” It was a class win! We also rebuke a Sunday Express story on Jackie Stewart: “‘On the straight I pushed the needle past 150mph.’ When did you last see an F1 car with a speedo?”

Whirlwind Colin

February 1983
The sudden death of Colin Chapman is, as we state, “Lotus’s great loss. He was not known as ‘the white tornado’ for nothing.” Seatbelts are compulsory, to editor Bill Boddy’s alarm. “We’ve been receiving news of persons injured due to being belted-in,” he gravely reports.

Brass Act

February 2011
Damon Hill tells us of being a young driver: “I was boring. All I talked about was how I was going to find a budget!” In Lunch With…, former Brands boss John Webb recalls an idea from 1976: “We put on Grand Prix Night of the Stars for TV. James Hunt did a turn with his trumpet.”