David Benson’s article about his arrest
In the article I wrote about the PR team from Ford Motor Company being arrested in Africa, I erroneously said that there was only one newspaper article about it. I was wrong. You’ll recall that one of the people arrested in the Congo was David Benson – then a reporter for the Daily Express. I believe that he was their motoring correspondent. I’ve found an article by him, written shortly after his release and return to the UK. You can see part of it above. As you can see,...
Read MoreThe roads in Africa
I’ve mentioned before – oh, probably only a few hundred times – that editing Petrol in My Blood has been fascinating. Reading all the material is wonderful. Not only the manuscript; I’ve also got press cuttings, letters, books, old ads and lots of material that hasn’t made it into the book. The book is already over 400 pages and my dad told me this morning that he’s just writing ‘another little chapter’. Last week he sent me a...
Read MoreRound the world delays?
In 1963, Autosport was pretty quick off the mark. As soon as Eric Jackson and Ken Chambers returned from their epic drive round the world, Fort Motor Company sent out its press releases and presumably the PR people were straight on the phone to Autosport which was, and remains, the source for motorsport news. If you click the image above, you’ll see a larger version of the report. It began: If you happened to be at London Airport at midnight, 2nd. September, you might well have...
Read MoreA few things I’ve discovered
Editing my dad’s book has been a revelation for many reasons as you can imagine. Probably the most surprising is that, although I already knew a lot about the trips – I was eight years old at the time of the London to Capetown record – I never knew just how very dangerous they were. I am guessing that my dad played down the dangers when talking to my mum – he didn’t want her to put her hand down with a firm foot (one of my mum’s expressions) in the way that...
Read MoreCortina d’Ampezzo
The Ford Cortina was named after a place called Cortina’d'Ampezzo in northern Italy. The town is in the Dolomites (wasn’t there also a car called the Dolomite many years ago?) In 1964, Ford Motor Company were enjoying huge success in many forms of motorsport, particularly with the Cortina. Eric Jackson had won the British Rally Championship (and of course had used a Cortina the previous year when he broke the London to Cape Town record), Henry Taylor was the British Touring Car...
Read MoreMeanwhile, back in Barnsley
You’d be amazed at some of the things I find in my collection of memorabilia. Quite how it came about that I am the custodian of hundreds of photographs, letters, newspaper cuttings, books and so on, I’m not exactly sure. But every time I go to explore amongst the boxes, I find something I’d forgotten about – such as the telegram pictured here. As you can see, this is the telegram that Eric Jackson sent home to Yorkshire from Cape Town. Nowadays, it seems strange to...
Read MoreAcross the Sahara and back
Even Eric Jackson doubted this trip would be a success. He had eagerly embarked upon the London to Cape Town record. He’d been quite confident when Walter Hayes suggested that he drive round the world. He didn’t bat an eyelid at the idea of driving to Timbuktu and back in a fortnight. He was more than happy to take part in any rally thrown at him. But across the Sahara desert and back without a spare wheel? That sounded tricky. And what’s more, the company who were...
Read MoreTimbuktu
In the early nineteen seventies, few people in England could have located Timbuktu on a map. Timbuktu was once of those places used in as shorthand to mean ‘remote’; people would say “Haven’t seen him for ages – must have gone to Timbuktu.” In fact, many people at that time didn’t realise that it actually was a place. It was seen by many as being one of those mythical, mysterious places of fiction like Narnia, Shangri La or Middle Earth. In...
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