The Bookworm Critique

Vanwall, to me, is kind of like the motorsport equivalent of the Gauls. I know that they are historically important, but prior to reading this book I couldn't have given you more than a very general rundown of why.

Gauls, as far as I know, hung out in western Europe (mainly France) for a few centuries before the Christian era and amused themselves by making life difficult for the Romans. Eventually, the Romans got sick of this and steamrolled them. Asterix and Obelix were Gauls. Beyond that, I can't tell you much without cheating and looking them up on Google.

Prior to reading this book, I knew that Vanwall was a British marque that flashed along for a few years in the 1950s, had the odd success and then vanished for reasons unknown. Well, reasons unknown to me, anyway. I probably could have guessed that Stirling Moss would have driven for them at some point, but given the spectrum of cars that Moss steered during his career, that is not what you'd call sticking your neck out. Oh, and I knew what the Thinwall Special was.

My sensitivity towards the team increased a little last year when I made the pilgrimage across the globe to visit the Donington Collection and checked out the Vanwall display - the first time, as I far as I can remember, that I saw any sort of Vanwall anywhere other than in a photograph. But if you were to put what I know about Vanwalls and what I know about Lotus on a set of scales, then the result would look rather lopsided - and I would not pretend for a second to be a Lotus expert.

So from that perspective, Ed McDonough's book about British motorsport's 'great green hope' (well, along with BRM) was something to look forward to.

McDonough is a valuable asset to the world of motorsport history. Not only is he a good writer but he also seems to be a capable driver, which brings a whole new angle to his understanding of the car. On top of that, he is a stickler for detail, and manages to express an enthusiasm for his subject without becoming seduced to the point where he cannot be critical.

Given the proliferation of title that exist about other marques, it struck me as odd that McDonough found the need to kick things off by justifying the need for another book about Vanwall - his concern apparently stemming from the fact that there had already been a book written about the team (31 years ago), a technical history of the car (16 years ago), a Classic Car profile (39 years ago) and a pictorial account (48 years ago!). Ed, I think it's safe to say that the market is some way short of being awash with Vanwall material.

On the contrary, this is the perfect time to produce a book such as this. Most of the other accounts were contemporaries or near-contemporaries of the team, and thus lack the depth of analysis and fresh perspectives that can be developed with the benefit of 40 years of hindsight. It also frees the book up from the complications that can arise out of any personal relationships that the author may have with the protagonists. Besides which, I don't have a lot of copies of Classic Car from 1967 kicking around.

'Green For Glory' is about as complete an account of the slow rise and sudden fall of one of Britain's early standard-bearers in Formula One as you could wish for. All sides of the story are covered - Tony Vandervell's early relationship with Ferrari (which seems an unlikely beginning for a British assault on Grand Prix racing!), the technical philosophy behind the cars, the drivers, the politics and the decline of the team following the death of Stuart Lewis-Evans.

Occasionally the tone of the book strays too far into engineering territory for my personal tastes, but that has more to do with my own technical shortcomings than any fault of McDonough's. There are plenty of other readers out there who will lap that sort of stuff up.

Flying in the face of the fact that the team that he is writing about disbanded four decades ago, McDonough manages to infuse his story with a fair amount of original interview material, most notably through his conversations with Tony Brooks.

Naturally there is also a fair amount of material drawn from secondary sources. But almost without exception, McDonough uses the material critically, always looking for counter-arguments or acknowledging potential flaws. In doing so, he effectively turns it into 'new' material, and helps to build a more reliable portrait of the team along the way. Nothing is taken at face value, and this pays dividends over and over again.

We're reaching a point where there is a generation of fans who don't even remember Jacques Villeneuve winning a World Championship, never mind Jim Clark, and this is not the kind of book that will turn them into racing history aficionados overnight. But if the idea of a revised look at an important early chapter of F1 history appeals, then this book could be right up your alley.