Author: Philip Porter
Foreword by Murray Walker
Published by: Porter Press International
Publication date: September 2016
Price: £35,
ISBN: 978-1-907085-33-8
Specifications: hardback, 640 pages,
672 Illustrations, c. 60 all colour
I’ll admit upfront that I had both a fan and a friend of Sir Stirling, having had the opportunity of meeting him after my own personal motorsport accident back in 2000, and had regular contact with him at motorsport events at Goodwood and other venues. Yet, while I know the facts that have circulated in the news over time, there is much I don’t know about what he has done and this is volume 1 of the source of that missing information, covering his childhood, and early years through to 1955.
At 640 pages, it is indeed a weighty item, yet it is no blow-by-blow dry account. There is much humour, insights, and explanations of the young Stirling to show how and why he became a British motoring champion at a much younger age than his contemporaries around him. And how he was, and still is, fiercely patriotic to the point where he refused to drive for larger foreign racing concerns so that he could still race British machinery.
Author Philip Porter has spent a great deal of time with Sir Stirling fleshing out the details behind the stories and therefore this rightly can be claimed to be the definitive tome on the man.
It is a book that will probably need to be read and re-read for all for details to be absorbed, but with Philip’s writing style, that is very much a pleasure.
For those not buying the book straight away, I can thoroughly recommend it being added to anyone’s Christmas list. I just hope Santa’s been working out before December arrives!
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