Jim Clark, Racing Hero
By Graham Gauld
McKlein Publishing/Verlag Reinhard Klein GbR
400 pages, hard cover, with slipcase 29 x 29 cm
72 color, 253 B&W images
English and German text
ISBN: 978-3-927458-75-8
Price 99 Euros plus shipping
Order here
Review by Pete Vack
All photos by and courtesy of Graham Gauld
Being the editor of VeloceToday is a wonderful job; In fact if one asked me if to create the ideal occupation for someone with my aptitudes and skills, the resulting job description would be identical with those of the editor of VeloceToday. Fancy that.
The downside to this often 24 x 7 job is that one does get all motored-out at times. The general antidote over-revving oneself on automobiles is to settle in after hours with a book or movie which has nothing to do with anything on four wheels; anything from Shakespeare to Soccer…. There are times that the last thing one wants to read is a book about motoring or motor racing or racing drivers.
So it was a bit of surprised that one night I settled in not with my normal non-automotive fare, but with Graham Gauld’s latest book, Jim Clark, Racing Hero and enjoyed it immensely, even on my ‘off hours’. We know the story, we know the writer, but the combination of Gauld and the over 300 excellent photos grabbed my interest immediately and didn’t let go. So Graham, you are responsible for this stint of automotive overtime. But time well spent.
That stated, it may be obvious that we are happily biased; Gauld has been writing monthly for VeloceToday for some years now and we like him. So bear this in mind as one reads on.
It is a picture book but the text is more than just long captions but a good deal of splendid and insightful writing. And in Graham’s case, the writing is typically Graham Gauld; humorous, honest, and is the result of a lot of firsthand experience and an acute memory. Graham is if nothing else a story-teller and one can hear his Scottish accent in almost every sentence.
Can you imagine? Graham Gauld, center, at a party given by rally driver John Milne, (far right) in 1963 in Glasgow. Clark is apparently chatting with Jackie Stewart while Nigel Dewar Gibb listens in.