The MOTOR SPORT Book of Donington
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Edited by W. Boddy. 121 pp. 8-1/2 in x 5-3/4 in. (Grenville Publishing Co. Ltd., Standard House, Bonhill Street. London, EC2A 4DA. £1.00. Postage, 10p.)
Published at an appropriate time, when the pre-war Donington Park circuit is in everyone’s mind due to the opening of Tom Wheatcroft’s, excellent Racing Car Museum, Motor Sport‘s coverage of the racing there from 1933 to 1939 is already in great demand. It contains year-by-year race reports and results of the Club meetings, the Nuffield Trophy, British Empire Trophy, the Coronation Trophy, and the RAC TT, etc. and very full coverage of the memorable Donington Grands Prix, particularly those when the great German teams of Mercedes-Benz and Auto-Union did battle. W.B. writes of these races, and the arrival of the German cars and drivers, as he saw them, a young motor racing enthusiast bursting with enthusiasm.
It is interesting to browse through the packed pages and be reminded of how Midlands and Brooklands drivers raced together at Donington, to meet famous and rare cars at speed on this road circuit and to discover eminent Rolls-Royce and other engineering personalities competing there in improbable cars, as all the drama of those pre-war Donington days emerges. It is interesting to find that the last Donington meeting was run by the VSCC.
Although not as ambitious as Boddy’s Brooklands history, this book has its maps, its appendices and its asides. At its competitive price a profundity of pictures is not to be expected but sufficient are included to depict the intimate features of Donington track and to show drivers like Shuttleworth, Lindsay, Eccles, Caracciola, Fairfield, Bolster, etc. taking part. There is a fine frontispiece of the 1937 GP which will bring back memories and it can be said that in the packed text, the contemporary reporting, “it’s all there”. There is a durable cover, the book being uniform in the Motor Sport series covering the Austin 7 and the Morgan 3-wheeler.—M.C.