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Novelists who went motor racing


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#1 David Shaw

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Posted 04 January 2011 - 11:14

I had been aware of Nevil Shute Norway (who wrote as Nevil Shute) racing an XK140 Jaguar in the late 1950s at Phillip Island, and then using his experiences in his novel On The Beach which was then turned into a movie in 1959.

While researching Australian races during the inter-war period yesterday, I found that F. J. Thwaites who finished 8th in the South Australian GP in a Ford V8 was the novelist Frederick Joseph Thwaites.

I suppose it's not really the type of hobby that I expected of a novelist, although there have been a few drivers that came from one area or another of the arts.

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#2 Tim Murray

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Posted 04 January 2011 - 12:12

The literary output of Hans Ruesch included a number of novels, including The Racer. More details in these threads:

Hans Ruesch and 'The Racer'

Hans Ruesch

#3 D-Type

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Posted 04 January 2011 - 13:26

Mike Hawthorn wrote (or at least put his name to) two children's novels Carlotti joins the team and Carlotti takes the wheel

Edited by D-Type, 04 January 2011 - 13:27.


#4 Amphicar

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Posted 04 January 2011 - 13:48

"I went to the Brands Hatch racing school and drove Formula Fords around long enough to crash one."
Bob Judd, author of "Formula One", "Indy", Silverstone", "Monza", Phoenix" etc (haven't read any of them)

I don't think motor racing (yet) has an equivalent of Antoine de St Exupery (who I have read but only in translation)

#5 David McKinney

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Posted 04 January 2011 - 13:59

The literary output of Hans Ruesch included a number of novels

But he was a racer who went novel-writing, not a novelist who went racing :)


#6 Bloggsworth

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Posted 04 January 2011 - 14:04

I don't think motor racing (yet) has an equivalent of Antoine de St Exupery (who I have read but only in translation)


They found his watch a short while ago...

Edited by Bloggsworth, 04 January 2011 - 14:05.


#7 jjordan

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Posted 04 January 2011 - 15:59

I am sure Pat Bedard qualifies as a journalist gone racer.

#8 D-Type

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Posted 04 January 2011 - 16:54

I am sure Pat Bedard qualifies as a journalist gone racer.

I'm sure there are lots of "journalists who have gone racing" but the question is really about novelists who went racing (and not even racers who wrote novels as Tim Murray and I have identified)

#9 Sharman

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Posted 04 January 2011 - 16:56

But he was a racer who went novel-writing, not a novelist who went racing :)


You mean like Adam Lindsay Gordon was the "writer chap who rode a bit"

#10 Vitesse2

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Posted 04 January 2011 - 17:12

Arthur Conan Doyle appears to have at least had some ambitions in motorcycle racing:

http://forums.autosp...w...t&p=1986206

His sons did of course race cars in the 30s.

Edited by Vitesse2, 04 January 2011 - 17:13.


#11 Amphicar

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Posted 04 January 2011 - 17:19

Some driver "autobiographies" should properly be filed under fiction. However, as (for the most part) the driver concerned didn't actually write it, they would not qualify.

#12 fbarrett

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Posted 04 January 2011 - 17:20

Don Stanford, who wrote The Red Car, a "youth novel" published in 1954, drove an MG TC in the early 1950s races through the streets of Aspen, Colorado.

Frank

#13 Geoff E

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Posted 04 January 2011 - 17:25

Arthur Conan Doyle appears to have at least had some ambitions in motorcycle racing.


Also

"Writing, looking after Louisa, seeing Jean Leckie as discreetly as possible, playing golf, driving fast cars, floating in the sky in hot air balloons, flying in early archaic and rather frightening airplanes, spending time on "muscle development," as body-building used to be called, kept Conan Doyle active but not really contented."

http://www.sherlockh...biography10.htm

#14 Tim Murray

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Posted 04 January 2011 - 22:17

But he was a racer who went novel-writing, not a novelist who went racing :)

This is obviously how the likes of us on TNF regard Ruesch, but I would suggest that the rest of the world sees him as a novelist and animal rights activist who did a bit of motor racing in his youth.

Edited by Tim Murray, 04 January 2011 - 22:20.


#15 David McKinney

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Posted 04 January 2011 - 23:06

I was merely alluding to the title of the thread :cool:

#16 Tim Murray

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Posted 04 January 2011 - 23:30

Ah - fair enough.  ;)

#17 P0wderf1nger

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Posted 05 January 2011 - 21:14

While working for Reuters in 1932, Ian Fleming was Donald Healey's navigator on the Alpine motor trials, in a 4½-litre Invicta.

#18 David McKinney

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Posted 05 January 2011 - 22:54

Not a novelist who went motor racing then

#19 fuzzi

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Posted 06 January 2011 - 17:13

See the Firle Information wanted thread:

Bentley 3½ litre - Gavin Maxwell

I knew he appreciated and drove fast cars but didn't know he had ever competed. I don't think all of his books were biographical..

Edited by fuzzi, 06 January 2011 - 17:13.


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#20 David Birchall

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Posted 06 January 2011 - 17:44

BS Levy has done a bit of historic racing apparently-does that count?

I have never read any of his books but found this on Wiki--perhaps some of this should be on the Blood Pressure thread:

"The Last Open Road is a novel written by B.S. Levy, a long time amatuer racer. It tells the story of a young mechanic from Passaic, New Jersey who becomes involved in automobile road racing during its peak in the 1950s. The book follows Buddy Palumbo, the main character, as he has to balance family life with working on cars. Buddy works mostly at a small gas station in his home town of Passaic, but also worked briefly at a foreign car shop in New York City.

The novel meanders through several real life race tracks, including Watkins Glen, Sebring, and Elkhart Lake (touching briefly on the creation of Road America near the end of The Fabulous Trashwagon) and also some real life races such as the Concourse de'Elegance at Elkhart Lake with some of the actual participants such as the three Cunningham's. Burt Levy's ability to create vivid characters, experiencing the world of amateur motorsports for the first time, and mixing that with historical detail are among the most engaging aspects of the story.
[edit]

Edited by David Birchall, 06 January 2011 - 18:31.


#21 scags

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Posted 06 January 2011 - 21:21

Burt raced a long time (non professionally), before he wrote the books. Nice guy, and the books are very entertaining.

#22 Tim Murray

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Posted 06 January 2011 - 22:32

See the Firle Information wanted thread:

Bentley 3½ litre - Gavin Maxwell

I knew he appreciated and drove fast cars but didn't know he had ever competed. I don't think all of his books were biographical..

Interesting. My first thought was that it must be a different Gavin Maxwell, but then I found the following in a review on Amazon of a biography of Maxwell, on this page:

In the end, one is almost astonished that Gavin's life and this book DO end. One has become so used to accounts like that recorded here by Gavin's friend John Hillaby recounting a time when Gavin rang him up:

"He said he wanted to say goodbye. Why, I asked, was he going abroad? No, he said, his fortune teller had told him he was going to die in a racing crash and as he was racing his Bentley at Brooklands the next day he thought he would like to say goodbye to a few old friends. By this time I had got used to Gavin saying things totally beyond my comprehension, so I said, Oh yes, well, goodbye then."

The only Maxwell recorded in WB's Brooklands history raced in 1926, which would have been far too early for Gavin. I wonder if anyone here has the book and could check for more racing references.

#23 BRMfan

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Posted 08 January 2011 - 15:25

Didn't Barbara Cartland race at Brooklands and isn't there a Barbara Cartland room there?

Edited by BRMfan, 08 January 2011 - 15:27.


#24 Doug Nye

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Posted 08 January 2011 - 15:31

She drove at Brooklands briefly in a very low-grade publicity stunt, onto which the postwar feminising museum powers that be latched to 'widen interest' in the Brooklands Museum...

DCN

#25 David McKinney

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Posted 08 January 2011 - 15:58

So, into the second page and still only one novelist who went racing...

#26 Vitesse2

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Posted 08 January 2011 - 17:01

Didn't Barbara Cartland race at Brooklands and isn't there a Barbara Cartland room there?

Barbara Cartland, racing driver - NOT!!

#27 RShaw

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Posted 08 January 2011 - 17:52

Frank Barrett mentioned Don Stanford, an author of a number of legitimate novels in addition to The Red Car (The Slaughtered Lovelies, Bargain in Blood, The Horsemasters).

One of the interesting sidelights to Stanford's participation in the 1951 Aspen, CO, race was that he was not the only novelist in the race. The small field of 11 cars also included Otis Gaylord, the brother of 60+ year SCCA driver Les Gaylord. Brother Otis only raced the one time, at Aspen in '51, driving a Jeepster to 4th place after spinning out five times.

Otis Gaylord's author's cred must be found under the name of "Peter Dawson", a pen name created by the publisher of the Luke Short series of Western fiction novels. Short, whose real name was Fred Glidden, had signed a contract with his publisher to produce a series of twelve or so Western novels under the penname "Peter Dawson". After a couple of years of little or no production, the publisher cast about for another author to fill the contract. Following a failed effort by Glidden's brother, Jonathan Glidden, Otis Gaylord picked up the contract, apparently at the urging of Stanford, who had counseled him to try writing as a relatively painless way to make a living. Gaylord, and Stanford, later tried the Hollywood screenwriting game, to no particular success.


#28 Amphicar

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Posted 08 January 2011 - 18:16

I think I've found a legitimate contender: Peter James is an award-winning British novellist who has written 25 books, mostly detective fiction, since 1981. Importantly, 16 of them were before 2005.

I found this on his website:

"At the end of May 2005 I successfully completed my first motor race - a 24 endurance race at Snetterton race track. It was a two-car team owned by Sir Aubrey Brocklebank (whose family once manufactured a motor car, The Brocklebank, a stylish saloon car manufactured in Birmingham from 1926-1929).

My co-drivers in our car, suitably covered in Dead Simple stickers to promote my new book (!), were my business partner and merchant banker Peter Rigg, Birmingham barrister Mark Heywood and Zoe Cardell-Walker who once came 5th in an all-woman team in this event. Despite my spinning off at Riches Corner, in pouring rain at 5.20am, we finished 23rd out of 33 - not bad since two of us had never raced before!"


Here is Peter dressed for the occasion:
Posted Image

And here is the snarling beast he piloted!
Posted Image

So he is definitely a novellist and he definitely went racing - albeit only once...and in 2CV.

Edited by Amphicar, 08 January 2011 - 23:17.


#29 john medley

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Posted 09 January 2011 - 05:49

Who will leap forward and tell all about Noel Tuckey?

#30 john medley

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Posted 09 January 2011 - 05:56

That should have read " Who will leap forward and tell all about Noel Tuckey ( Squalo Ferrari driver and writer of "Thylocene Man" and others)?"

Ford V8 driver FJ Thwaites was also a publisher

#31 Ray Bell

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Posted 09 January 2011 - 06:38

Is that taking it from 'Novelists who went motor racing' to 'Racing drivers who wrote novels'?

If that is okay, then we should mention Eldred Norman. He was married, as everyone knows, to Nancy Cato who was a very successful novelist. At one time he decided to outdo his spouse in the writing department and wrote a novel about coffins in the sky.

I've forgotten the details, it was something to do with launching bodies into space to save cemetery space or similar, and naturally enough it was never published.

Nor did Nancy got to publish her story of their adventure 'through 17 countries in a car' driving a Falcon wagon from France to Australia via Russia. Bronnie is supposed to be finishing that one, but it's a real life story so probably doesn't qualify.

Did Nancy ever race? Hillclimb, perhaps?