The Goodwood book too valuable to read | Frankel’s Insight

It starts with a photograph of the ninth Duke of Richmond, Freddie March — the man who brought racing to Goodwood in 1948 — trying his elder brother Charles’ ‘auto-wheel’ bicycle, all the way back in 1914. This was an innovative contraption whereby an entire unit containing a third wheel and a small engine could be strapped to the back of said bicycle, turning it, in effect, into a powered tricycle, and an early forerunner of the moped.

Goodness knows what it must have been like to ride, but I believe they came with a choice of two or four stroke engines and a fuel tank designed to fit over the rear mudguard.

Until I bought the book, I didn’t even know the ninth Duke had had an elder brother (in fact he had two, one lost in infancy). Charles was born in 1899, served with the Irish Guards on the Somme and was captured in 1918, posted as missing but turning up in a prisoner of war camp where he’d stay until the Armistice. For many teenagers, that would have been more than enough excitement for one young life. But apparently not for young Lord Settrington.

I think we should be cautious of taking as gospel the suggestion that he signed up for the Royal Fusiliers for no other reason than that he was bored, but in 1919 sign up he did, and off he went to fight the Bolsheviks in the Russian Civil War. He never came back. He lost his life in action near Archangel where his remains are buried to this day.

On such events does history sometimes turn, for it was only then that the 16-year-old Freddie became next in line to the title. Without Charles’ fateful decision in 1919, the future of Goodwood and everything about it we hold so dear, could have been very different indeed.

But I digress. I got the book at that second Revival and thought it would be nice to adorn it with the paw prints of some of the great and the good present that day. And happily, I found most of them sitting around a table, enjoying the sunshine outside the Goodwood Hotel where we were all staying.

As the then editor of Motorsport magazine I knew most of them, some quite well, and had no problem acquiring the seal of the likes of Stirling Moss, Tony Brooks, Murray Walker and Derek Bell. Phil Hill I’d never met but he was happy to sign, as was John Coombs and the book’s co-author Simon Taylor.

John Surtees signed too, though didn’t seem particularly happy to be asked, while Desiré Wilson looked positively and charmingly surprised that I should even consider having her name among such a roll call of the great and the good. The only person who actually shied at the prospect was Carroll Shelby.

The fact that so many of his old racing mates had greeted me so warmly made no difference at all as my name meant nothing to him. It was only when some kind soul (I forget which one) leaned over and told Ol’ Shel what I did for a living that he grudgingly acceded and made his mark on the page.

Even all these years later I still find it sad and strange to think that most of them have already gone to the great race track in the sky, and those signatures, gathered very much on a whim and as something of an afterthought, have assumed a far greater significance in my life than I would ever have imagined at the time. Some of them, Stirling, Derek and Tony in particular, became far better friends thereafter.

But it also presented me with a problem. A book which I’d planned to read from cover to cover and use thereafter as the definitive reference work to all that went on before, during and after Goodwood was first used for racing had become altogether too personally precious to me, just to use for casual leafing.

It would only be a matter of time before I spilled a cup of coffee over it, because tipping hot beverages over things that should not have hot beverages tipped over them is one of the few pastimes at which I truly excel. Which is why I now have two copies of The Glory of Goodwood, one preserved in aspic containing the signatures of all those friends and heroes, one dog-eared and shop-soiled which I use all the time though, to date I note, still remarkably free of coffee stains. Only a matter of time I’m afraid…

Main image photography courtesy of Andrew Frankel. 

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