Speed Reader

Depending upon your generation, Scott Brown - and Lister, for that matter - may require a brief introduction. The 1950s motorsport arena was ripe with interesting characters, but even in those times, Scott Brown stood apart.

Lurid yet fast in the car, handsome and charismatic outside of it, he was certainly not the type to let the fact that he'd been born with a badly malformed arm and two malformed legs get in the way of anything, whether it be courting female attention or pursing a successful racing career.

And he was certainly successful, particularly in sports cars. Much of the Scot's career was tied to the new British sports car manufacturer Lister, and Scott Brown would eventually score more than half of his 71 major victories at the wheel of one of Brian Lister's cars.

Scott Brown also had a good track record in open-wheelers, including a start in the 1956 British Grand Prix at the wheel of a Connaught. That outing ended in disappointment - after qualifying tenth, he retired with transmission problems on lap 16. But later that same year, he used the same car to break the outright lap record at Brands Hatch at a BRSCC meeting. (He actually broke the Brands lap record twice that year).

The end came on a damp day at the Spa Grand Prix for sports cars in 1958 when, five laps into a thrilling battle with Masten Gregory for the lead, Scott Brown's Lister skidded off and crashed at the Seaman bend, causing injuries that would later prove fatal. Lister closed its garage doors a year later. The name was resurrected in the 1980s and returned to the racetrack in 1993 with the Lister Storm Le Mans prototype, and more recently, the Lister Pescarolo.

Edwards already had a solid reputation as a motorsport historian prior to embarking upon this book, and 'Archie and the Listers' enjoys the full benefit of his research and storytelling abilities. The four-decade gap between the subject and the author inevitably created a few barriers, but on the whole Edwards has done an extraordinary job of reconstructing Scott Brown's life.

One of the strongest points is that Edwards never allows his passion for the subject cloud his judgement. When someone immerses themselves in something to the degree that Edwards must have done while working on his manuscript, it would be easy to fall into the trap of becoming too close to the person that you are writing about.

But Edwards does a great job of finding a balance between affection and honesty, never allowing sentiment to cloud his judgement. This is demonstrated when he recounts the time that Scott Brown had his racing license withdrawn following a protest from a rival:

"Archie had applied for his own licence in late 1950, by post, as was the custom. When it came to the section which requested that the applicant volunteered any details of disabilities, he had written in his crabby left-handed script, 'fingers missing - left hand'. To be sure, it was an approximation of the truth, compounded by the omission of any mention of his feet, which were also without their full compliment of bones.

"Without further ado, once the stewards had a closer look, the licence was summarily withdrawn. This event has been written up, by Archie's fans at least, as a heartless 'Star Chamber' decision. It is, however, only fair to say that the Stewards of the Competitions Committee had other priorities.

"While Archie had impressed all by his practice times, his driving style was lurid, to say the least, and no one was to know whether or not he was making a virtue of necessity by driving so entertainingly, or whether he was an accident waiting to happen. It was not a risk that they felt they could afford to take. They were in a situation from which they could not emerge with any credit whatever they did."

The book features some nice anecdotal material - the tale of Scott Brown dropping to the floor of a bar near Goodwood and giving 20 one-armed press-ups following a request from the Connaught team to demonstrate his strength prior to offering him a drive brought as smile, as did Mike Hawthorn's attempt to warn him away from the troublesome BRM on the grounds that it "has already tripled my laundry bills".

By the same token, a few other opportunities to bring Scott Brown back to life are missed. At one point, Edwards tells us that Scott Brown has developed being superstitious "to a fine art - his list of do's and don'ts almost deserved its own manual". That being the case, it would have been interesting to be given a few examples.

That's really nit-picking though, because on the whole this is a wonderful book, and one of those great examples of a fabulous story being teased out of a life that could otherwise have been forever consigned to the obscurity of footnotes. 'Archie and the Listers' is readily-available online, and can also be found in specialist bookstores.