The Bookworm Critique

Not much retains any real sense of immediacy or freshness after 42 years. Sure. David Lee Roth might still be doing gigs in Vegas, and Gwen Stefani will still undoubtedly look fantastic for her age. But neither of them will be particularly interesting anymore.

Even most of the wines that you're likely to encounter in your lifetime would be three, perhaps four decades past their best by then. (Unless you move in very fortunate circles, that is). But for every rule there is always an exception, and that's where 'The Cruel Sport' fits in.

Back on the shelves in a new edition after first being published back in 1963, this is one of those rare gems that speaks every bit as loudly now as it ever did. Opening this book is like cracking the seal on a time capsule stocked full of the images and thoughts of the Grand Prix world in the late 1950s and early 1960s. My previous knowledge of Daley and his work prior to sitting down with this book was pretty much zilch. Given that he has apparently written 27 books (and served as NYC deputy police commissioner, amongst other things), I think we can safely put it down to ignorance on my part.

But aside from the book ­ which we'll get to in a moment ­ he is quite an intriguing character himself, and the way that his personality and perspective flavours the story plays a big part in setting this book aside from similar titles to have been released over the years.

First up, he is an American, and one who was bewitched by Formula One long before Bernie and co decided that his part of the world was a crucial market for the sport. Indeed, Daley got into the sport long before 'crucial markets' played a serious part in determining the calendar. While documenting some of the tumultuous ­ and adventurous ­ years of F1 history, the book also casually tracks Daley's journey as a writer, from trying desperately to sell a feature about the Marques de Portago to a B-grade men's magazine to serving as the Grand Prix correspondent to the New York Times.

Reading between the lines, it seems that if there was a clique of British journalists back then, he was not included. Indeed, he remarks early on that his inability, or perhaps refusal, to accept death and injury as a day-to-day part of the sport led to him being labeled as morbid by some of his colleagues. Where others would bury a fatal accident in the 14th paragraph of a race report, he would analyse and dissect the incident. Yet far from subscribing to the 'if it bleeds, it leads' approach, Daley was trying to make sense of what could strongly be argued was a fairly pointless waste of a life.

Witnessing Lorenzo Bandini's accident at Monaco proved to be the final straw, and Daley decided that he could not bring himself to follow the sport any longer. During his years in the F1 paddock, Daley forged some tight relationships with drivers, most notably Phil Hill. He couldn't have timed it better, as he would presumably have been right in the thick of things when his compatriot won the 1961 World Championship in the Ferrari 156, the sexiest car ever produced at Maranello. To earn a few extra dollars, he carried a couple of cameras around to the races, taught himself how to use them, and ended up becoming a rather good photographer. It annoys me when people are that talented. He can probably dance, too. The end product of all of this (minus the dancing) is a rather brilliant sketch of the 1960s F1 world.

Daley breaks down every aspect of the sport ­ the components of a race weekend, driver psychology, the preparations, the leading players, driving techniques ­ and distills them into neat, economical and yet evocative descriptions of a sport rich in subtexts. It's sensitive and honest, and 'human', for want of a better word. Daley admires the drivers, but he is not blind to their faults. Nor, as he points out once or twice, are they blind to his. His description of the cooling of the relationship between himself and Dan Gurney after he wrote something that Gurney construed as negative was something that I as a journo can relate to, and reveals a side of the job that usually fails to find its way into books like this.

Also nice was the book's sense of perspective. Daley writes of fathers trying to explain to their sons how state-of-the-art the pre-war Mercedes cars were, but facing an uphill battle because the new, sleek rear-engined darts that had replaced them had rendered them so redundant ­ and then notes that down the track, these same kids will be grown-ups trying to get their own offspring excited about an antiquated Lotus or Cooper in a motoring museum. Having seen exactly that at the Goodwood Collection earlier this year, this sentiment seemed to give the book a weirdly contemporary feel.

Writing in the 1960s, Daley was addressing the fans of the time. But more than any book of the era that I have read, there is a sense that he is talking across the generations to us as well. And then there are the photos. The racing shots are competently taken, but the real highlight are the driver portraits, the vast majority of which were taken candidly. It's not by accident that the three original endorsement quotes on the back of the dust cover ­ penned by Phill Hill, Ken Purdy and Jim Clark ­ all point to the originality of the images. The shots alone make the book worth shelling out for; the fact that the text is also extremely good is the icing on the cake.

I can't see 'The Cruel Sport' finding much of an audience outside of those who are already fans of pre-Schumacher Formula One, which is a shame because I've not yet come across a book that better conveys the feel - or what I imagine to be the feel, since I wasn't there - of Grand Prix racing 40 years ago. For those who are enthusiasts of the era when racing was in black and white, this is a required purchase. Unsentimental and yet sensitive, and informative without ever being condescending, this is a book that wholly deserves its status as a classic. If someone could overcome the gauntlet of PR people and ice-cool facades of the modern era, it is a book that would also stand up well to a 2006-spec update...