Motor

Murray Walker combines and enclyclopaedic knowlege of Grand Prix racing with an unbridled fanaticism that remains undimmed after more than half a century of race commentaries.In his personal tribute to the sport, he celebrates the most talented drivers of all time, the rivalries that have set his pulse racing and the circuits he finds the most inspiring.This updated edition of Murray Walker's Formula One Heroes gives an 'in a nutshell' appraisal of legends old and new from an esteemed hero and geniuine F1 insider who, even now he' retired, cannot keep his all-consuming passion off the page.

Best known as the third presenter in the unholy trinity that is Clarkson, Hammond and May on Top Gear, James May has lived, breathed and dreamt about cars his entire life. There is something about cars that stirs up intense feelings in people - how it makes them look to the outside world, how it makes them feel about themselves, how it looks to their girlfriends or their mates, or their neighbours. These feelings are humorously described in May on Motors, as James takes us on the road and looks at the cars that have shaped him, his world and the ordinary people of Britain.In May on Motors, James has brought together his most controversial and amusing pieces to make a brilliant collection that will amuse and inspire all car enthusiasts.

Top Gear presenter and columnist for the Daily Telegraph James May brings together another brilliant collection of his most controversial and humorous writing. From tales of motoring adventures through India, Russia and Iceland, to classic articles on essential subjects such as driving songs and haunted car parks, these gems from the number one car connoisseur will take readers on a motoring journey that will amuse and entertain in equal measure.

A fascinating journey into the pastand under the groundthat offers ';an insightful look at the what-might-have-beens of urban mass transit' (The New York Times). From the day it broke ground by City Hall in 1900, it took about four and half years to build New York's first subway line to West 145th Street in Harlem. Things rarely went that quickly ever again. The Routes Not Taken explores the often-dramatic stories behind unbuilt or unfinished subway lines. The city's efforts to expand its underground labyrinth were often met with unexpected obstaclesfinancial shortfalls, clashing political agendas, battles with community groups, and more. After discovering a copy of the 1929 subway expansion map, Joseph B. Raskin began his own investigation into the city's underbelly. Here he provides an extensively researched history of the Big Apple's unfinished business. The Routes Not Taken sheds light on: *the efforts to expand the Hudson Tubes into a full-fledged subway *the Flushing line, and why it never made it past Flushing *a platform under Brooklyn's Nevins Street station unused for more than a century *the 2nd Avenue linelong the symbol of dashed dreamsdeferred countless times since the original plans were presented in 1929 Raskin reveals the personalities involved, explaining why FiorelloH.LaGuardia couldn't grasp the importance of subway lines and why Robert Moses found them old and boring. By focusing on unbuilt lines, he illustrates how the existing system is actually a Herculean feat of countless compromises. Filled with illustrations, this is an enduring contribution to the history of transportation and the history of New York City.

Barging Round Britain by David Bartley is a beautifully-illustrated guide to a unique and fascinating part of our history: the canal network.Explore the people and places that have forged this national treasure, from the birth of the Industrial Revolution to the leisure explosion on our waterways today. Fully-illustrated with maps and photographs, the book will trace canal routes across the UK, from the Georgian grandeur of Bath to the dramatic splendour of the Scottish Highlands.This is the official tie-in to the ITV series, coming to prime-time TV in January 2015. David Bartley's Barging Round Britain includes a foreword and chapter introductions by the presenter of the TV series, John Sergeant.

This is the remarkable story of Barry Sheene, the cheeky cockney boy who grew up to become a sporting legend. He won the British motorcycling 125cc championship aged just twenty and twice became World Champion in the 500cc class, despite two life-threatening crashes. In an era when sport and its personalities rarely made it off the back pages, Barry Sheene crossed the bridge between sport and celebrity in a style that only George Best had achieved previously.Barry is an intimate and revealing account told by three people who knew him better than most. Steve Parrish, fellow bike racer and now BBC commentator, Nick Harris, who wrote and broadcast on all Barry's major successes, and Barry's widow, Stephanie. Frank and fascinating, Barry is an exclusive look into the extraordinary life of a charming and complex man.

The most definitive and compelling book about the legendary racing driver, now a BAFTA award-winning documentary.'For the casual racing fan it's a mighty good read, for the Senna fan it's indispensable' Time OutMillions of people around the world watched in horror on that fateful day in Imola at the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix when Ayrton Senna's car careered off the track at 190mph. The greatest driver in Formula One history was dead.In this classic sports book, Richard Williams explores the complex Brazilian who was a hero in his own country and an icon to everyone who loved not just motor-racing but sport itself. In his drive to win and his desire always to test himself to the limit, Senna embodied all that is best and most thrilling in sport.

Jeremy Clarkson is once more Driven to Distraction.Brace yourself. Clarkson's back.And he'd like to tell you what he thinks about some of the most awe-inspiring, earth-shatteringly fast and jaw-droppingly cool cars in the world (oh, and a few irredeemable disasters...).Or he would if he could just get one or two things off his chest first. Matters such as: The prospect of having Terry Wogan as president Why you'll never see a woman driving a Lexus The unforeseen consequences of inadequate birth control Why everyone should spend a weekend with a diggerDriven to Distraction is Jeremy Clarkson at full throttle. So buckle up, sit tight and enjoy the ride. You're in for a hell of a lot of laughs. Praise for Jeremy Clarkson:'Brilliant . . . laugh-out-loud' Daily Telegraph'Outrageously funny . . . will have you in stitches' Time OutNumber-one bestseller Jeremy Clarkson writes on cars, current affairs and anything else that annoys him in his sharp and funny collections. Born To Be Riled, Clarkson On Cars, Don't Stop Me Now, Driven To Distraction, Round the Bend, Motorworld and I Know You Got Soul are also available as Penguin paperbacks; the Penguin App iClarkson: The Book of Cars can be downloaded on the App Store.Jeremy Clarkson because his writing career on the Rotherham Advertiser. Since then he has written for the Sun and the Sunday Times. Today he is the tallest person working in British television, and is the presenter of the hugely popular Top Gear.

By night, Brian Johnson sings in the biggest rock 'n' roll band on the planet.But by day, AC/DC's charismatic, flat-capped frontman gets to indulge his passion for all things automotive.Cars and rock 'n'roll, they were made for each other.Car racer, car collector and all-round car enthusiast, Johnson is an incurable, certifiable petrolhead who can't remember a time when four wheels didn't feature as large in his life as music.Starting, as a young boy growing up in Tyneside, with an old steering wheel and his imagination, a lifelong passion took root early.And through cramped teenage fumbles in an old mini and clapped-out, hygienically challenged tour vans, to chauffeur-driven, leather-trimmed limos and a sideline as a successful racing driver, it's been there ever since.By turns, surprising, joyful, poignant and usually laugh-out-loud funny, Rockers and Rollers is the story of man with an insatiable appetite for life and a glimpse into the extraordinary world of AC/DC, set soon to overtake the Beatles as the biggest selling-band in history.Packed with hair-raising anecdotes and revealing a God-given talent for comic writing on every page, Brian Johnson has written the most unique, entertaining autobiography of the year.And essential reading for car nuts and rock fans.Well that'll be most of us then ...

Jeremy Clarkson gets under the bonnet in Clarkson on Cars; a collection of his motoring journalism.Jeremy Clarkson has been driving cars, writing about them and occasionally voicing his opinions on the BBC's Top Gear for twenty years.No one in the business is taller.In this collection of classic Clarkson, stretching back to the mid-1980s, he's pulled together the car columns and stories with which he made his name. As coal mines closed and house prices exploded to a soundtrack of men in make-up playing synthesizers, Jeremy was already waxing lyrical on topics as useful and diverse as: The perils of bicycle ownership Why Australians - not Brits - need bull bars Why soon only geriatrics will be driving BMWs The difficultly of deciding on the best car for your wedding Why Jesus's dad would have owned a Nissan Bluebird And why it is that bus lanes cause traffic jamsIrreverent, damn funny and offensive to almost everyone, this is writing with its foot to the floor, the brake lines cut and the speed limit smashed to smithereens. Sit back and enjoy the ride. Praise for Jeremy Clarkson:'Brilliant . . . laugh-out-loud' Daily Telegraph'Outrageously funny . . . will have you in stitches' Time OutNumber-one bestseller Jeremy Clarkson writes on cars, current affairs and anything else that annoys him in his sharp and funny collections. Born To Be Riled, Clarkson On Cars, Don't Stop Me Now, Driven To Distraction, Round the Bend, Motorworld and I Know You Got Soul are also available as Penguin paperbacks; the Penguin App iClarkson: The Book of Cars can be downloaded on the App Store.Jeremy Clarkson because his writing career on the Rotherham Advertiser. Since then he has written for the Sun and the Sunday Times. Today he is the tallest person working in British television, and is the presenter of the hugely popular Top Gear.

In I Know You Got Soul, Jeremy Clarkson writes about the machines that he believes have 'soul'. It will come as no surprise to anyone that Jeremy Clarkson loves machines. But it's not just any old bucket of blots, cogs and bearings that rings his bell. In fact, he's scoured the length and breadth of the land, plunged into the oceans and taken to the skies in search of machines with that elusive certain something.And along the way he's discovered: The safest place to be in the event of nuclear war Who would win if Superman, James Bond and The Terminator had a fight The stupidest person he's ever met What an old Cornish institution called Arthur has to do with 0898 chat lines And how jean-Claude Van Damme might get eaten by a lionIn I Know You Got Soul: Machines with a Certain Something, Jeremy Clarkson tells stories of the geniuses, innovators and crackpots who put the ghost in the machine. From Brunel's SS Great Britain to the awesome Blackbird spy-plane and from the woeful - but inspiring - Graf Zeppelin to Han Solo's Millennium Falcon, they can't help but love them in return.Praise for Jeremy Clarkson:'Brilliant . . . laugh-out-loud' Daily Telegraph'Outrageously funny . . . will have you in stitches' Time OutNumber-one bestseller Jeremy Clarkson writes on cars, current affairs and anything else that annoys him in his sharp and funny collections. Born To Be Riled, Clarkson On Cars, Don't Stop Me Now, Driven To Distraction, Round the Bend and Motorworld are also available as Penguin paperbacks; the Penguin AppiClarkson: The Book of Cars can be downloaded on the App Store.Jeremy Clarkson because his writing career on the Rotherham Advertiser. Since then he has written for the Sun and the Sunday Times. Today he is the tallest person working in British television, and is the presenter of the hugely popular Top Gear.

Jeremy Clarkson invites us to Motorworld, his take on different cultures and the cars that they drive.There are ways and means of getting about that don't involve four wheels, but in this slice of vintage Clarkson, Jeremy isn't much interested in them.Back in 1996, he took himself off to twelve countries (okay, eleven - he goes to America twice) in search of the hows, whys and wherefores of different nationalities and their relationships with cars. There were a few questions he needed answers to: Why, for instance, is it that Italians are more interested in looking good than looking where they are going? Why do Indians crash a lot? How can an Arab describe himself as 'not a rich man' with four of the world's most expensive cars in his drive? And why have the otherwise neutral Swiss declared war on the car?From Cuba to Iceland, Australia to Vietnam, Japan to Texas, Jeremy Clarkson tells us of his adventures on and off four wheels as he seeks to discover just what it is that makes our motorworld tick over. Praise for Jeremy Clarkson:'Brilliant . . . laugh-out-loud' Daily Telegraph'Outrageously funny . . . will have you in stitches' Time OutNumber-one bestseller Jeremy Clarkson writes on cars, current affairs and anything else that annoys him in his sharp and funny collections. Born To Be Riled, Clarkson On Cars, Don't Stop Me Now, Driven To Distraction, Round the Bend and I Know You Got Soul are also available as Penguin paperbacks; the Penguin App iClarkson: The Book of Cars can be downloaded on the App Store.Jeremy Clarkson because his writing career on the Rotherham Advertiser. Since then he has written for the Sun and the Sunday Times. Today he is the tallest person working in British television, and is the presenter of the hugely popular Top Gear.

In the essays collected here William Langewiesche considers how flying has altered not only how we move about the earth, but also how we view our world and our place in it. With vivid descriptions of the aesthetics and excitement of flight, Langewiesche also writes of the risks that go with this beauty: the perils of air traffic control, and the dangers of nervous passengers and bad weather. Full of spare and elegant prose, Aloft is a fascinating journey into the new, profound dimension that flight has added to the human experience.

He was the last man Lars Marlin had expected to see in Rio de Janeiro- and it took all of his willpower not to slay him on the spot.

In a world without aircraft, to believe flight might be possible required a certain kind of character. You had to be starry-eyed, a possessor of practical ingenuity, nerves of steel and a level of sanity that would be best described as deficient. In Mayday!, David Darling tells the stories of the unconventional aviators across history who have been willing to risk all to further their craft. Meet Sophie Blanchard, a balloonist of nervous disposition whom Napoleon charged with organizing balloon displays at all major ceremonies in France. Then there's the daredevil stuntman Lincoln Beachey, the dogfighter aces of WWI, the man who performed the dance of death switching planes in mid-air, the real ';X-Men' who flew at the edge of space, and the BASE jumpers who want to fly without wings. The cast are eccentric, reckless and extraordinary, and Mayday! is made up of their riveting tales, bizarre contraptions, magnificent achievements and, sometimes, startling folly.

An incredible 30,000 flights at least arrive safely at their destinations every day. But a handful don t, while some come terrifyingly close to crashing. When even the smallest thing does go wrong at 35,000 feet, the result is nearly always a fast-unfolding tragedy. This extensive collection of compelling real-life accounts of air disasters and near-disasters provides a sobering, alternative history of the just over 105 years that passengers have been travelling by air, from the very earliest fatality to recent calamities.But there are incredible stories of heroism against the odds, too, such as that of Captain Chesley Sullenberger who successfully landed his aircraft with both engines gone on the Hudson River in New York, saving the lives of everyone aboard, and of the American Airlines crew who prevented terrorist Richard Reid from exploding a bomb hidden in his shoe three months after 9/11.The book also details the often ingenious, always painstaking work done by air-accident investigators, while a glossary helps to clarify the occasional, inevitable bits of jargon.

Inside one of the world's most dangerous jobs with the star of History's top-rated reality show, Ice Road TruckersThe highest-rated reality show ever to hit the History channel, Ice Road Truckers follows the heart-pounding adventures of the tough-as-nails truckers who risk peril every day to deliver goods and supplies in Alaska and across Canada's frozen north. Alex shares tales of his adventures-and misadventures-in the north, and explain, in his own entertaining voice, how he got to where he is today-working class hero, bona-fide celebrity, and the improbable star of a smash-hit television show. Alex is a natural storyteller who knows how to spin tales about his colorful life growing up in the backwoods. Whether he's recounting tales about his hair-raising confrontations with bears, calculating the strength of newly formed ice, divulging the secrets of providing security in a bar room full of combative, drunken miners, or saving the life of another trucker, he keeps you wanting more.The first inside look at industry legend and fan favorite Alex Debogorski, a devout Christian, father of 11 children, and the world's best known truck driverIncludes thrilling adventures and behind-the-scenes insights that you won't find on the showFeatures sidebars that explain the facts about ice roads, from how they're made to when and why they splinter and breakKing of the Road gives fans of Ice Road Truckers a deep look inside the life and times of the show's biggest rising star.

Looking Back at Class 24 & 25 Locomotives takes a closer look at these plucky and versatile Type 2 locos in a full-colour photographic album. The images follow the locomotives from their introduction in the late 1950s and throughout their service years, continuing to their final demise from everyday service. Inside we look at some of the variations that have appeared over the years and at many of the liveries they have borne. A varied selection of locations and workings have been chosen from a vast library of colour photographs, which are accompanied by informative captions; they are sure to appeal to both the enthusiast and the modeller alike.

This is the fascinating story of the development of early British steam fire engines by a renowned expert on emergency services vehicles and equipment. Ronald Henderson, a member of the Fire Brigade Society and an expert on steam engines, covers the history of the early inventions that coupled steam with fire pumps. This includes the concepts created by firms such as Braithwaite & Ericsson and their steam fire pump and also further inventions by Merryweather & Sons and Shand, Mason & Co., including hand-drawn and horse-drawn fire engines. This book will appeal to all steam enthusiasts and to those who are interested in early industrial technology. It provides a fascinating insight into the way that steam was harnessed to improve the efficiency of firefighting services and how that led to the modern fire engines of today.

Well-proportioned, versatile, aesthetic, durable - the English Electric Class 37, the great survivor of the modernisation-plan diesel fleet, deserves all of these accolades and more. Never as celebrated as the Deltics, never as idolised as the Westerns, always intended to be a workhorse; this is the locomotive that has, in many ways, surpassed its more illustrious peers as an example of all that is best in motive power design and engineering. This pictorial collection contains nearly 200 photographs of one of the best loved of diesel types, compiled by Andrew Walker with contributions from other photographers who, like him, have always been drawn to these great British locomotives. The Class 37s always roamed far and wide over the national network, and this book covers locations ranging from the Scottish Highlands to South Wales, showing the 37s on freight and passenger duties, at depots and in works. Showcasing images from the 1970s through to the present day, the book provides detailed captions with in-depth technical specifications and information on the individual locos, their history and operation in traffic, and features many of the class variants and their liveries over the decades.

The Alvis company of Coventry were motor and aero engineers who made some of the finest motor cars during the period 1920 to 1967, when car production stopped. There were no independent coachbuilders left and mass production was not for Alvis. Total production was a mere 21,250 and fewer than 7,000 after the Second World War. It is the post-war cars that this book focuses on. The successor to Alvis's iconic Fourteen, the Three Litre, had a production run of seventeen years and the newest is now nearly fifty years old. John Fox offers a fascinating look at both technical and historical aspects of Alvis cars during this period, utilising rare archival and modern photographs.

This is the first book to cover the little-known car production of the famous Birmingham Small Arms company (BSA). BSA had its roots in gun manufacture in Birmingham and then expanded to include bicycles, cars and motorcycles and the take-over of Daimler. In 1929 they built an innovative front wheel drive three wheeler light car which led on to more conventional models, all being front wheel drive. Reported in the press as being 'milestones in history', the models included the Three Wheeler, the FW32, T9 and Scout, BSA being pioneers worldwide of large-scale production front wheel drive. Today the concept is almost universal, but BSA were first. Due to impending and necessary wartime commitments, car production stopped in 1940. Drawing on his technical background in the aeronautical world and full access to unique photography and illustrations from the BSA archive as well as the BSA Front Wheel Drive Club, Graham Skillen has produced a unique book that will be of interest not only to BSA fans, but to classic car enthusiasts in general.

The Standard Motor Company grew to be one of the biggest companies in Coventry and employed some 11,000 people at its height. Based at its huge factory at Canley, Coventry, it produced cars for sixty years. The purchase of the Triumph marque in 1945 added a second brand to the stable and all post-war Triumphs were designed, developed and built in Standard factories. This book covers the formative years of the company from 1903 to 1912 and describes the vintage Standards produced between 1913 and 1930, as well as the post-vintage and Flying Standards of 1931-1939. The author discusses the acquisition of Triumph and covers the post-war Standards and Triumphs produced between 1945 and 1961 as well as the Leyland takeover and the company demise. This concise introduction includes descriptions of the cars built by Standard, and includes a fascinating variety photographs of surviving cars, period factory photos and brochure material.

'On an average Saturday, some thirty trains carried police escorts of between two and eight officers. Officers sometimes reached the destination with their uniforms soiled with spittle, and other filth, burnt with cigarette ends, or slashed.'Charting the history of violent acts committed by football hooligans on the British rail network and London Underground, numerous retired police officers offer a frightening, and often humorous, insight into how they battled 'the English disease'. Recalling incidents of random, mindless violence, as well as organised acts carried out by some of the country's top hooligan firms, the authors document the times where nothing but a truncheon and the power of speech stood between order and chaos. Exploring a period of fifty years, retired officers Michael Layton and Alan Pacey pay particular attention to the turbulent and dangerous times faced by the police in the 1970s and 1980s, when hooliganism in the United Kingdom was at its peak, as well as exploring more recent instances of disorder. Tracking the Hooligans is an essential account of the uglier side of the beautiful game, and a fitting tribute to those who gave their time, and sometimes their lives, keeping the public safe.

This comprehensive book provides the full background and history of the groundbreaking Kawasaki Z1. The author describes how 'King Zed' became a sensation after its launch in 1972, combining incredible performance with convenience, reliability and practicality. Although pipped to the post as the first four-cylinder 'superbike' by the 1969 Honda CB750, Kawasaki riposted with extra power and a top speed of 135mph, knocking the opposition into second place. The fastest production motorcycle of its time, the Z1 received rave reviews in the motorcycle press. Rod Ker describes the various makeovers that the model received later in production, and how it was given a new lease of life as the fuel-injected GPZ1100. Finally superseded in 1984 by lighter and more efficient models like the all-new water-cooled GPZ900R, the Z1 had already become established as a classic and an appreciating asset.

The Somerset & Dorset Railway, known as the S&D (said to also stand for 'Slow and Dirty' or 'Serene and Delightful'), ran from Bath across the Mendip hills to Bournemouth on the south coast. Never a high-speed line, the main traffic for the Somerset & Dorset during the winter months was freight and local passenger traffic. In the summer, however, there was heavy traffic as Saturday holiday services from the northern industrial towns passed along the line. In 1962, John Betjeman travelled along the Somerset & Dorset from Evercreech Junction to Highbridge and Burnham-on-Sea, making a BBC documentary called Branch Line Railway, in which he pleaded for the line to be spared from the Beeching cuts. However, despite an active campaign to save it, and the promise by the new Labour government that there would be no more railway cutbacks, on 7 March 1966 the whole line was closed. 2016 will see the fiftieth anniversary of the closure of this much-mourned railway; here in this well-illustrated book, the history of the line is preserved.

In May 1940, following the rapid advance of German troops through Holland, Belgium and France, the British Expeditionary Force and French army retreated to Dunkirk. Operation Dynamo was instigated in an attempt to rescue as many of them as possible. With the harbour at Dunkirk severely damaged, much of the evacuation would have to take place from the beaches; only small, shallow-draught boats could do this. After appealing to boatyards, yacht clubs and yachtsmen throughout the south east of England, the Admiralty managed to round up around 700 small craft which, along with 200 military vessels, were able to rescue an astonishing 338,226 troops over nine days. In 1965, forty-three vessels which had taken part in the evacuation commemorated the twenty-fifth anniversary by crossing from Ramsgate to Dunkirk, and the Association of Dunkirk Little Ships was formed soon afterwards. A further fifty years on, over 120 Little Ships are still in commission and it is thought that hundreds of others may still survive. This is their story.

The drama of the landscapes of Yorkshire and Humberside combined with some of the most powerful diesel and electric locomotives to be found anywhere in Britain. The photographs in this book cover every aspect of diesel and electric traction in the Yorkshire and Humberside area, hauling both passenger and goods trains. The types, classes of locomotive and the operating companies represented are as varied as the landscape, which ranges from the Pennine hills to the windswept coastline and industrial railway yards. The wide selection of locations includes the Yorkshire Dales, North Yorks Moors and East Riding, as well as the cities and towns of York, Bradford, Sheffield, Kingston-upon-Hull, Harrogate, Knaresborough, Scunthorpe, Immingham and Great Grimsby. Stunning photography and extraordinarily varied landscapes are combined and captured in superb detail.

Formed in 1864 by the amalgamation of the Oswestry & Newtown, Newtown & Machynlleth, Llanidloes & Newtown and several other railway companies, Cambrian Railways was the largest independent railway in Wales, with a long, winding, single-track main line that extended from Whitchurch in the east to Aberystwyth and Pwllheli on the Welsh coast. In 1922, the company was amalgamated with the Great Western Railway under the provisions of the Railways Act 1921 and thereafter, the Cambrian line was worked as an integral part of the GWR system. The present-day Cambrian main line runs from Shrewsbury to Pwllheli, a distance of 118 miles, and there is an important branch to Aberystwyth. The line, which runs through spectacular mountain and coastal scenery, serves as a vital lifeline for the inhabitants of scattered towns and villages such as Welshpool, Machynlleth and Harlech, while at the same time the sinuous Cambrian route plays an important role in the Welsh tourist industry - a role that is further enhanced by the way in which this highly scenic route provides a convenient link between several of the famous Welsh 'heritage' railways.

Hugh Llewelyn has travelled throughout Britain to gather this collection of his photographs of the diesel shunters. In addition to the main classes deployed by British Railways from the 1940s up to the present time, he also covers many of the rarer engines to be found working the docks and industrial centres. The shunters are shown in great detail and the images include not only the preserved examples, but also many of the neglected engines either in storage or abandoned. The result is a fabulous visual reference for rail enthusiasts with a wealth of detail for model makers.