Remembrance of cars past

It is a good time for those who derive pleasure from books about the old motor racing days or pictures of now-historic vehicles. Here is Brian Demaus’s fascinating Motoring Around Hereford, Worcester &The Welsh Marches, which is packed with clear reproductions of ancient photographs, many of the most unusual vehicles in contemporary settings, long ago. The kind of thing no enthusiast for the motoring past can resist.

Demaus has certainly dug them out — 195 in all, divided into makes, bicycles, motorcycles, commercials, steam waggons, cars, and garages and workshops. I bet some makes will be new to you.

Speed venues like Shelsley Walsh, Dinmore Hill (now the A49), Coleport, Hopton Bank, Storton, Copthom, Angle Bank, Stalybridge and Madresfield, and old adverts, etc, are included.

The author is seen showing Reid Railton’s son his Arab and you find Raymond Mays lying prone to work on his Bugatti ‘Cordon Rouge’. (Tempus Publishing, Stroud, ISBN 0 75242361 4, £12).