Just at the mo I'm feeling rather 'Jenksed out' because we are doing a lot of work involving him.
But I welcome this thread because the often irritating little bugger was very much my mentor, and mentor also to an entire generation of fine people who I believe do credit to his memory - including in alphabetical order Maurice Hamilton, Alan Henry, Andrew Marriott, Nigel Roebuck, Simon Taylor and really so many more...
If he thought you were a kindred spirit he was fantastically generous and open in his help for much younger enthusiasts. He was very much an honorary uncle to my two kids - as to many others - and once they were old enough to do interesting things he was great to them, and they thought the world of him.
His self-written obituary perhaps sums him up best:
"Born in 1920, Denis Jenkinson died at xx years of age. He had planned to live to 100 years, a nice tidy number, but his luck ran out.
"Anyone who did not know Jenks, or at least know of him, is of no importance or significance in the Motort Sporting world, which was his world for all but 10 years of his very active life with cars, motor cycles and aeroplanes. A product of the 20th century, he enjoyed and wondered at it all his life."
It's all there. You see the streak of vanity, a dash of pomposity, a touch of dismissiveness for those of whom he did not approve, a tidy mind, in many ways a schoolboy personality, a passion for his interests, total commitment to them, and a lifelong capacity to enquire, and to admire, and to wonder at the works of his fellow man...
John Fitch described him as "the mediaeval man" because Jenks never regarded safety as being anything other than an excuse for lack of daring, suppression of the human spirit. Competition motoring was his entire world. He detested politics and politicians, and World War 2 to him was merely a pestiferous "...fuss between politicians which postponed what should have been some great years of racing".
He was in my experience utterly fearless. He was totally incorruptible. He was fiercely intelligent, deep thinking and analytical and derived intense joy from creating an alternative personal reading of almost any incident one could choose. At his height he was usually absolutely correct, justified, penetratingly accurate. At his worst he would vent often unreasonable personal distaste or dislike, but once vented it would seldom last long. He would never apologise. He would hardly ever admit error. He would gleefully point out and celebrate error in others.
His real heroes - the men he would most like to have been - were:
a) Rudi Uhlenhaut, engineer, designer, a development driver capable of embarrassing his works drivers with comparable lap times, a kindred spirit - and:
b) Piero Taruffi, ferociously independent motor cycle and motor racer, engineer, team chief, designer, racer, record breaker...and Mille Miglia winner.
Drivers he really rated included Rosemeyer, Wimille, Fangio, Moss, Clark, Stewart (with the caveats expressed above), Lauda (for much of his career, especially when the British press took a dislike to him, so Jenks's contrariness sent him the other way), Villeneuve (up to a point), Jones, Rosberg (but for his loud mouth) and then Senna - who, in what was really Jenks's dotage, was adored in a manner approaching an almost schoolboy crush.
He began to lose interest when Grand Prix drivers began eating muesli and playing tennis. He wanted their pursuits to be ones of interest and daring. Eating "birdseed" and playing "woolly-ball" were neither.
His independence meant he never married - though nearly all his life he was attracted particularly to other blokes' wives and for long periods succeeded with them in rather more practical terms, especially with two of same - and he never either understood nor fell foul of the basic requirement to support a family which compromised many of his pupils' later work (very much including mine) when earning a living became first priority, producing work of merit secondary... (yes, OK, that IS an admission common to many of us).
He lived hard and rough, he was tough as old boots, he was never coarse, he used what might be described as 'bad language' in its place, particularly for its richness and emphasis, he was never less than civilised in his general demeanour and behaviour, and what has been quoted above from 'Car' magazine he would describe (as would I) as being "complete bollocks".
Like all great men he was flawed.
But believe me - us - here was a truly Great Man. It was a never less than entertaining privilege to know him. Flaw to flaw...
Sorry to ramble on.
DCN
PS - Barry is quite right about his 'Racing Car Review' books 1947-1958. They are gems. On ebay at the mo there are some priced around $5 from Australia, and £15 from the UK!
PPS - Tomas - Jo Bonnier was regarded as being remote, cold, aloof, snobbish - a racing motorist as opposed to being a Racing Driver, and one long past his sell-by date, running his car, combing his hair, posing for the photographers... Jenks neither recognised nor understood the role which JoBo played of being the drivers' multi-lingual, often diplomatic, interface with worldwide race promoters. He would not have objected to that, but for Bonnier insisting on appearing in the races still...
PPPS - Bernd - Jochen was perhaps the first leading Formula 1 driver since the earliest 1950s to appear upon the scene without a clue who DSJ was, nor caring. He dressed "weirdly", he was extremely abrupt in his manner and could be coarse and rude in his language and he showed neither respect, nor understanding nor interest in the little bloke with the beard. Jenks could have absorbed all of that, but for Rindt's lack of Formula 1 success. 49 GPs into his career, DSJ took great delight in being dismissive of a talent with whom everybody else seemed entranced.
P-etc - Oldtimer - Jenks's outlook was never so far as I know 'nationalistic' in the modern sense of that word. By contemporary standards he was peerlessly Internationalist - he had lived and worked in Belgium from choice in the late 1940s-early 1950s - he was violently critical of 'Little Englanders', and hugely receptive of German management and engineering regardless of recent history...which in the '50s was rare on this island. But he was ecstatic at living in an era in which his friends' teams and cars progressed to pre-eminence. At one stage he had lived with Connaught MD Geofffrey Clarke and his wife, he recognised the towering mixture of supreme talent, humility and modesty in young Tony Brooks, and when their car took Maserati's trousers down at Syracuse his writing was more partisan (for his chums) than 'nationalistic'. He was seeing the dawn of a new age...and he lived to see it through.
Really enjoyed that. Thanks for taking the time to write it. DSJ is someone who I would love to have chatted with about motorsport. A true enthusiast.
Brilliant. 
Setright, DSJ, John Bolster, Pete Lyons referred to. Even Russel Bulgin gets a mention. I really do miss LJK's stuff and for years have been searching car boot sales and similar for old 70s and 80s copies of CAR magazine so I could re-read some of his columns, but no luck. 
Unfortunately Ebay's hasn't been much help because the words "CAR Magazine" are so common - any kind of search just brings up thousands of thousands of hits with no way to filter the results. I particularly remember one column he wrote devoted to the pleasures of smoking cigarettes while driving fast. They were very non-PC times back then! I'd love to read that column again. The same goes for Russell Bulgin's old columns - I know there's a book of some of Russell's stuff but Amazon quoting that one at £100 .....
