Woolf Barnato's Blue Train Bentley

In my piece on Woolf Barnato’s racing (November issue), space precluded mention of this Bentley driver’s run from the South of France to London which beat the famous Blue Train. He did this with his Speed Six Gurney Nutting coupe GJ 3811. Among other Bentleys he owned were a 1927 63litre Freestone & Webb saloon, and a 1930 8-litre limousine by the same coachbuilder, GO 5010, and a Vanden Plas 8-Litre tourer GP 401, etc.

This Blue Train drive was immortalised by Terence Cuneo in his painting of car and train, both accurately portrayed, although neither would have run adjacently on the route used — rather like showing Bleriot’s first flight across the Channel as ending in Hyde Park instead of in a field near Dover.

The photograph used last month of the 3-Litre Bentley at Montlhery was of the 1926, not the 1925, record bid.