I have been given unstinting help from many people in producing this book. Primarily my gratitude goes to my wife Pam for deciphering my long-hand pencil writing, her typing and, mostly, for her patience and encouragement. I thank Giacomo Agostini for his flattering words and David Bernard, Hugo Wilson, Malcolm Wheeler and a special thanks to Nick Jeffery for putting my words in some sort of coherent order. My thanks go to 'Old MJ' Mike Jackson for Norton facts, David Dixon for his photographs and recollections and atmosphere and more excitement has been added to the pages by the many photos and drawings supplied by Dieter Mutschler, Stefan Knittel, Rod Coleman, Wolfgang Gruber, Malcolm Carling, Brian Holder, Mick Ofield, Mick Walker and Mick Woollett.
Copyright Peter Williams 2010
All rights reserved. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrical, chemical, mechanical, optical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission.
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A different sort of racer
Father Williams and the young man
Before racing
Starting something good
1965
1966
1967
Disc brakes
1968
Front forks
1969
'Tales of the ancient Thames'
1970
Wheels
1971
1972
1973
TT lap
1974
'Right you are. Sir!'
Since the great days
I feel a particular friendship and fond for my friend Peter. When he starts racing, he made me a very good impression. When I met him in the track I understood that it was going to be very hard to beat him, he was really fast and determined, and he also was really good to set up the bike. I have nice memories of our races in England. I had to give 110% to beat him! He would have had a great career but destiny was against him. He is a nice person, both as a man and as a rider, that's the reason why I remember him with big fond.
Your friend,
Giacomo Agostini
On his day there was no one better than Peter Williams, and I mean no one.
Mike Hailwood
Peter, second to no one.
Tom Arter
This book is dedicated to Mimi, and Jack, and Ed, and to the one who looks after and puts up with the peculiar ways of a problematical man. She devotes herself to our children and me. She encourages me. She is clever, amazing and wonderful. She is my wife, Pam.
I enjoyed writing - or at least, trying to write - as well as the writers who I read. I was also conscious that there was nothing in the world that I enjoyed more than riding motorcycles so I suppose it is natural that I should dream of being a motorcycle journalist, being paid for my hobby! In the absence of a new motorcycle to do a test report on, I wrote about my dear old KSS Velocette. I sent the article to David Dixon, to whom my father had introduced me. He was then (allegedly) working on ‘The Motor Cycle’. David offered my handiwork to Harry Louis who was a great friend of my father. This cut no ice; Harry scanned my best efforts and promptly passed it back to David with the comment, ‘Suggest to Peter that he should stick with what he knows best, whatever that is, but break it to him gently.’
A note from David Dixon: Jack Williams’ words, emanating from a cloud of pipe smoke, were, ‘I'm worried about Peter and his lack of a proper job. He loves motorcycles, and he can write. Do you think that he could be a motorcycle journalist?’ I don't remember my exact answer but I do remember using a box of matches re-lighting my own pipe as I considered a suitable response, a trick I'd learnt from ABB (Editor-in-Chief, Arthur Bourne, who had employed me presumably on my ability to light a pipe, with the bonus of being able to ride and maintain a motorcycle). The upshot was that Jack entrusted me to ‘have a word with Peter and try and talk some sense into him…’, a task which over the years I've tried to do and hopefully, one day, will achieve.
My trophies together with one of my father’s, the ‘Spirit of Ecstasy’, and one of my son’s for football excellence, make for three generations of Williams sporting trophies.
My eleven year motorcycle racing career seems like yesterday to me. Something from that wonderful time pops into my mind each and every day. I am glad to be haunted by the great deeds and the memories of the super men I have met and ridden with. They were people who had a passion for motorcycles and racing, and I was one of those people.
For many years after the last day of my career I seldom talked about it, but in my head there was a pot of golden memories.
Riding motorcycles set me on a wonderful road. I found that I had a talent, and that I was more than just good at riding motorcycles very fast. Unaware of this ability, I started racing by chance rather than from ambition. Before that I was drifting. I only started going to Brands Hatch race circuit on practice days to experience the fabulous feeling of being in control of what to me was sometimes like another intelligent entity.
I found that I could ride motorcycles better and faster than most people. The tide which caught me as a consequence of that talent took me to places, heights and experiences which I could not possibly have imagined before I went racing. I had the joy of racing motorcycles as my profession. I am more proud of my achievements than words can describe.
And that is not all. I was two people; I had two professions. Simultaneously, I was a motorcycle racer and a mechanical design and development engineer. I was a different person on a motorcycle to the one who stood at the drawing board, but my two roles complemented each other. In my boyhood and teens I sketched and pictured my racing motorcycles on paper and constantly in my mind. I never thought that one day the bikes would be built, by the chance of my riding career. I rode those bikes and they won. The bikes still exist; some in pride of place in museums and some in private collections. That makes me very proud, too.
Racing motorcycles gave me experiences which were sometimes on the cusp between the possible and the impossible. Adventure, friends, travel and opportunity were mine for eleven years. For eleven years I was obsessed and besotted with racing motorcycles and everything to do with them. What would I have done without them? Since the 26th August 1974 I have missed them desperately.
Another reason for my pride is to read that I was a graceful rider. Long before I started racing I saw grace in the way Geoff Duke, John Surtees and Mike Hailwood rode. They personified the art-form I have always seen in very good riders riding motorcycles very quickly. It was fantastic how much faster these men were than anyone else. How did they make it look so easy at the same time?
I have been happier on wheels than on my feet since my very first ride on a bicycle when I was five. The whole experience of riding on two wheels fascinated me even from those earliest few minutes. Now, as I look at the factory's service road from my office window, or see the strips of concrete surrounding the airport’s runways or the curves of a road winding over the brow of a hill, I see the geometry of the line I would take on a racing motorcycle. My instinct is to look for that line - instantaneously - and to find the combination of braking, cornering and acceleration that a modern computer would take ages to plot. My instinct is to find the shortest time from a starting line to the chequered flag - if only I was on my racing motorcycle. I'm not, but how I wish I could be.
I know I am not alone in pining for the lost experience of my sporting career. The years, or in my case injury, leave sportsmen behind to be replaced by newer and younger magicians of their arts, whether they be footballers, tennis players, runners or come from any other sport. Some people cannot let go and move on. I have moved on, but I'm not sure that I want to let go. My memories and friends from those days are too valuable to discard. While going forward I am aware of the shadow of what I was behind me.
‘Racing’ and ‘races’ are the words I must use for the events I rode in to ride fast. ‘Racing’ and the business of competition infer winning and losing and proof of superiority but it also infers, more mildly, comparison. I pitted myself against other riders to gauge how good I was at my art. I never, or seldom, raced to win or beat anyone else. I lacked the will to win, and the determination to beat the other man. If the other man was faster I did not like it, but I could not beat him because I was always at my limit anyway. I was not the sort of sportsman who could exceed my previous best in my hunger to win. If I went faster than I wanted to I would invariably fall off. I rode to try to achieve my quickest time for each lap and every race. If that happened to be faster than anyone else then I would win.
I think that this motivation for racing was different from that of my peers. I use the word racing, but for me it was not racing, but fast riding. My motivation was to do it well; to do my best, and to go as fast as I possibly could.
Many, many years later I went on a management course which I initially found very boring. However, when we discussed a system of management identified by Peter Drucker as 'Management by Objectives', it struck a chord. The principle was that everyone in a department doing their best would result in the department doing its best. When all departments did their best the company would be successful and profitable. (It's pretty obvious really!) I raced by objective. If I got the details right, prepared the bike well and got each bend right, then when I rode well I would win.
John Updike's third ‘Rabbit’ novel describes the golfer's joy of smacking the ball strong and straight down the middle of the fairway better than I can describe the satisfaction of getting a difficult bend right. The cricketer's joy of finding his bat's sweet spot for the ball to go for a six is why he plays. Why does Steven Gerrard play football? Because he can fire the ball like a bullet into the goal's top corner from 35 yards! It is intense satisfaction. Winning is, of course, much more than just pleasing but I had additional, and perhaps extraordinary, reasons for riding motorcycles as fast as I could. The feeling of getting a bend just right is, indeed, indescribably satisfying, but I had the additional enormous pleasure of making the motorcycle itself faster as well. The engineer follows his profession because of a similar satisfaction for the levels of skill required to create something which works better than anything else. It made me feel good to go out on the track, to see the needle of the rev counter creep past its previous best because of a new development which had progressed from calculations, onto the drawing board, made into metal, fitted to the engine, onto the dynamometer and into the bike on the race-track.
You may think I am kidding myself, or you, that I did not ‘race’. If I am, it is because I raced against myself and certainly did not like racing against other people. They put me off and got in the way. There is nothing I liked better than to win a race by a good margin - as I used to see Geoff Duke or John Surtees do. To finish a lonely race in second, third or fourth place (it was a bad day if it was lower than that) was OK, but had the detraction that others were practising their art better than I. Each race was like riding a motorcycle on the road, except that the great feeling, and the opportunities for my art, were magnified by a factor of ten on the track.
Like any other boy, I had my heroes. Mine were Geoff Duke, John Surtees, Mike Hailwood and Derek Minter. My father worked until 1953 at the Vincent factory in Stevenage. Sometimes I would ride pillion with him on a Rapide or Black Shadow, and we would go to Silverstone, Mallory or Oulton Park to see their magic. Later, when he worked at the AJS-Matchless factory in Woolwich, I would skip school to cycle to Brands Hatch to watch great riders practice. To me, Bob McIntyre, John Hartle, Joe Dunphy were superior beings. A few years ago at Beaulieu I found myself on the same platform as Geoff Duke and John Surtees. I found it uncomfortable being regarded on an equal footing to my heroes. I found it confusing hearing them talk about how hard they used to try, when they made it look so easy. In my eyes they could not be demoted from the ranks of the gods. They were still supermen to have done things on motorcycles that I knew to be impossible. Even on the starting grid I felt out of place and somewhat uncomfortable amongst the great riders of my own time - even when I had become an experienced rider myself. It was still peculiar to be amongst them, or even to lead them past the chequered flag.
I believe that everyone has a great latent talent for something within them. Whereas all sorts of circumstances prevent most people from finding theirs I was lucky to find mine and to earn my living from it as a rider and an engineer. Something from my father wormed its way into me to make me emulate him in a way which was most unconventional and unpredictable, yet somehow inevitable. To experience the adventures of the racing life was the experience of my lifetime. Racing gave me a great vantage point to see masters practice what to me is an art form. Following John Cooper through Island Bend at Oulton Park was to watch live art. To be in a line of racers skittering around Gerard's Bend at Mallory Park, searching for the last newton of friction was to be with human beings doing the very nearly impossible. To go round Burnenville and Malmedy bends at Spa-Francorchamps in the Belgian Grand Prix ‘flat-in-top’ was the equivalent of the climber hanging by his fingertips over a drop of a thousand feet..
There were no hospitality tents, no huge race transporters and no motor homes. England was just building its first motorway. We travelled around Europe in a Ford Thames 15cwt van with two or three bikes in the back, and three or four blokes in front. Have you seen those vans, or do you remember how small they were? The Thames was our transport, our home and our workshop. We went to Barcelona and back with no lights. We slipstreamed lorries for a thousand miles through the night for their light and speed; Milan to Canterbury in 26 hours; Brno in Czechoslovakia when the Russian tanks rolled down the streets; a Daytona cop with his gun at my neck because I walked from my hotel to the Raceway instead of driving; stuck with my race bikes in no-man's land between Italy and Switzerland with no documentation. Adventure!
Creg-ny-Baa: Getting home safely. The photo says a lot. It typifies the Isle of Man and the TT. Notice the copper on the race track! I liked the lonely ride; nobody else in sight, the enthusiastic crowd willing me to win. My nanosecond of celebration was just back up the hill.
Health & Safety and Security were not big deals. I sit with my father lighting his famous pipe on the Isle of Man TT pit bench with the petrol bowsers above. © Wolfgang Gruber
My father, Cecil John (Jack) Williams
I always felt that I was a bit of a nuisance to my father, though I am sure that he was not conscious of giving this impression. People still went into work on Saturday mornings in the 1950s. He would bring his work home in the evenings and weekends too. The impression I had from him was that because he was so engrossed in his work, any interruption to his thoughts and any intrusion to his schedule were unsettling and irritating for him. I was quite aware that my incessant playing with bicycles and later motorcycles was not approved of but, as he had done the same at my age, he could hardly complain. However his prior experience gave him insight and a suspicion as to where it might lead. It was apparent to him what was responsible for my failure to pass my A level exams. Later I realised that it was because I am hopeless at doing exams. My father's great ambition was that I would go to university, so I think he thought that I had failed him.
He had taught himself engineering theory and practice by pure hard work, and he was extremely proud to be awarded his coveted MIMechE and became a qualified Chartered Engineer. He hoped the same for his son. And why shouldn't he? But I chose my own path, which took me some time to find. I won few qualifications because I froze when I entered the examination room. But I did know the subjects, and was able to put them into practice more effectively than most people, through working with those previously disruptive motorcycles. They were my university.
It may seem strange that a man whose own life had been given direction through racing motorcycles should not encourage his son to experience the same joy. I think the reason for this was that he saw so much more potential for achievement, security and even wealth in a profession. He was not a pompous man, but it sounded as if he was when he referred to anyone he admired and saw as successful as ‘a considerable man’. It was completely natural that he should want me to succeed in the ‘establishment’ and not in the temporary, ad hoc delights of motorcycle racing. Sport was not a big deal in the 'fifties and 'sixties. It was so much better to be a ‘considerable’ professional man than a ‘top’ sportsman. At the time, he had no evidence to suppose that I could be a top sportsman, of course, let alone a respected engineer. Naturally he wanted me to focus on study and not on motorbikes, which wasted time and served as a distraction from learning the fundamentals of a profession.
Not exactly Little Lord Fauntleroy, but my father at 10 years old
My father's career started in a similar way to my own. He had a great friend when he was 20 years old - whose name I never knew - who was a great influence on my father's life and just as my friends were on mine. He and my father lived at Great Barford near Bedford. One day they decided to go to Brighton, an exciting and fashionable place in the 1920s, but a long way to go in those days. Their day by the sea coincided with the Brighton Speed Trials, and both boys were bewitched by the sounds, the smell of oil and dope, and the speed. They used up all their money, so they had to walk and hitch home. They slept the night under a hedge, and in the morning returned to the speed trials, which was more fun than going home.
He used to try various shapes of handlebars, and different exhaust pipes, causing the local bobby much grief and red-faced fury from his exhaust noise and speed (just as his son would do thirty years later) because his route often took him past the policeman's house. But my father's main fun was to meet his friend early in the morning and go to selected bends in the area to learn the Art of the Racing Line.
His mate would stand at the side of the bend and would flag him down if anything came the other way. This playing came to an end when the two friends set off for Syston in Leicestershire - another exciting place to be, and, again, a long way to go in those days - for the serious matter of racing. They arrived after practice had started, and had the opportunity to watch. This was nearly a bad thing, because my father said it would be better to go home than to look foolish in comparison to these supermen who came flashing past at such incredible speeds. His friend managed to persuade him at least to practice, which he reluctantly did. After a few laps his friend told him the stop watch showed he was about as fast as anyone, so whilst doubting this report, he allowed himself to have a go.
He won the first race, the 350cc class; and the second, the 500cc class; and the third, the 1000cc class; each was with a record lap and race time! But the day did not finish there! D.R. O'Donovan -The Wizard of Brooklands, and now the chef d'équipe of Raleigh - offered him a works bike. He accepted immediately and the two adventurers floated home three feet off the ground.
In a remarkable precursor of my own exploits forty years later Jack put up a brave effort in the Hutchinson 100 at Brooklands. In those times 'the Hutch' was a one hour handicap race and on the 25th October 1930 my father was Scratch Man, that is, he was to be last away. In fact, Brookland's famous timekeeper, A.V. Ebblewhite, walked away with his stop-watch and his little flag and my father thought he had forgotten him. But he came back, seemingly toward the end of the race an hour later, and said, 'You can go now.' 'C.J' rode as hard as he knew how and came fourth but Mr. Ebblewhite gave my father his own special award as ‘An appreciation’ in realisation of his handicapping mistake. For my father would have had to break the Hour World Record to win; however, he did record 103.22mph. If he had won, his prize would have been the enormous solid silver Mellano Trophy. I won it twice - for him.
My father's Ebblewhite Trophy in recognition of an heroic race
C.J, now on a Douglas, is King of Syston.
My father taking his prize at Tollerton Flying Club for the noisiest aeroplane
My father raced for eleven years from 1928 to 1939 - about the same length of time as I did. He rode 'works' bikes for Raleigh, Douglas, Vincent-HRD and semi-works bikes for Velocette. He was lounging with some friends in the sun drinking a cooling draft outside the Tollerton Flying Club one Sunday lunchtime when they heard a wonderful sound of a very fast aeroplane approaching. Scanning the sky above the clubhouse the aircraft crept into view, its sound was attractive and exciting in inverse proportion to its speed. It was inappropriately called a Kitten Moth and he bought it. My father found that its top speed was indeed little higher than its take-off speed which was only just enough to lift it above the hedge at the edge of the airfield. But he loved it. He was a good pilot. And he kept a large black stallion and loved to go riding and hunting.
Father flew from Tollerton aerodrome near Nottingham, and in 1936 he and Tommy Bullus, another great friend, set up in business nearby selling cars and motorcycles. Father looked after the workshop.
Tommy was the salesman. He was tall - over six feet - and a very charming Yorkshireman. I think that he only raced in Germany and was in fact German champion at least once on a P&M which must have been much faster than its successor, the Panther. He told me that Hitler had said to him as he presented the cup at the Nürburgring, ‘Ach, Tommy, you may not be ze politician but by Christ, you can ride ze motorbike!’ His loyalty to German racing had a lot to do with his girlfriend, whom he married and spirited away to England just before the war. She had a strong connection with motorcycles, being the daughter of the founder of NSU. They lived and worked in Leeds until his retirement.
Everything fell apart for my father and hundreds of thousands of people in September 1939. I had been born on the 27th August, a week before World War Two had started, (it wasn't my fault -honest!). Williams and Bullus Ltd ceased trading as the two owners went to war. My father joined the RAF in the hope of flying. Though he was too old to fly at 31, he stayed with the RAF, and was highly valued looking after aircraft. As a Squadron Leader in the Technical Corps he was posted to Egypt.
His engineering was learnt from motorcycles and the Kitten Moth aeroplane. He loved tools and service equipment as much as the aircraft themselves.
One time an aircraft full of ‘top brass’ made an emergency landing at his airfield in Egypt, on their way to an important wartime strategy meeting. They could not go any further, because the aircraft had a serious mechanical problem and there was much concern at the prospect of not getting to the vital meeting. The Brass were surprised when my father said that he could repair the aircraft - because, as an avid hoarder and collector of equipment that was not used by other bases, he actually had the right tools for the job.
He repaired the aircraft, and the Brass reached their destination on time. Later, my father received an official reprimand for possession of unallocated tooling. He also received personal thanks from the Air Vice-Marshal.
My father was what I would call ‘an innocent’. I think his mind was too full of technical thoughts to notice the world outside. One time he and some fellow RAF officers were invited to dine with the local Egyptian dignitary. During dinner, the sheik proudly pointed out his young son to his guests. My father commented on the child's beauty, thinking he was being courteous and complimentary to his host. He was soon horrified to find that his host had given him the boy. My father had to be extricated from this excruciatingly embarrassing situation through the diplomacy of his fellow officers.
Suddenly, for me as a six year old, there was a man who would arrive on an enormous motorcycle and come into our house. This huge man wore waders and an absolutely enormous coat that could be wrapped right around to keep out the cold and wet. He gave me a beautiful solid wooden lorry. It was my father. Except for three days leave, he had been away from England and my mother and me for nearly six years.
After he was demobbed, he had very little to his name. Like hundreds of thousands of other people after the war, he had to start from scratch. He was testing 1000cc V-twin motorcycles by riding between our Nottingham home and Stevenage for the new company, Vincent-HRD. Phil Vincent (PCV) had added his name as the new owner of HRD with the intention of making an illustrious motorcycle marque (which I fear was not appropriate for the post-war austerity of Britain). I don't like to think of my father after the war as only a tester for Vincent-HRD. Maybe his actual work as a development engineer meant that he had to test the product.
Being an ex-TT and Brooklands rider, you can guess that he did not hang about, even in the winter which was much harder than it is now. Winter on motorcycles did not daunt people in those days. Perhaps people were tougher back then, or perhaps cars were no warmer or more weatherproof than bikes.
He told me years later that one cold morning whilst knocking along at up to 80mph on his way back to Stevenage, he came to a town with a steep hill and was brought to a stop behind a stationary lorry. My father had not realised why it had stopped, or that the lorry was sliding backwards on the ice. It rolled back over my father and broke his leg. He was saved by some former German prisoners of war who lifted the lorry clear.
Another time he got it all wrong early one morning on a fast bend on the A1 trunk road. Again he was lucky because, although he and the bike were thrown out of sight from the road into a field, an observant motorist noticed the hole in the hedge and rescued my unconscious and not-yet-aged parent.
My father was once up in front of the beak accused of dangerous driving. He had been stopped and warned by the rozzers for speeding on the Vincent-HRD Black Shadow but as he pulled away he took both hands off the handlebars to pull down his goggles. This was a simple habit of racers and experienced riders to prevent misting of their goggles. He had to explain this to the magistrate and, having impressed him as being a sober sort of chap, he was sent away with another warning.
Initially, Matt Wright was Chief Development Engineer at Vincent-HRD (which soon became Vincent) with Phil Irving as Chief Designer. They got on very well together but Matt Wright left to take on the development of the ‘works’ 500cc AJS Porcupine, the ‘works’ 350cc AJS 7R3, and the small-batch production racing bikes, the 500cc Matchless G45 and 350cc AJS 7R at Plumstead in London and my father took his place at Stevenage.
My father's full name was Cecil John Williams. To the public during his racing period he was known as ‘C.J.’ Williams to distinguish him from another rider, Jack Williams, but his many friends and colleagues called him Jack; the exception was Jock West, my godfather, who always called him John.
We moved to a tiny bungalow in Knebworth, just south of Stevenage. I think he was happy at Stevenage. Everyone mucked in to help each other rebuild a war-weary country and industry. I remember Matt helping my father build additions to the bungalow. Knebworth is well known nowadays, because of all the music and other outdoor events at Knebworth House - which I remember well from the walks and picnics we used to have in the grounds.
Like many people, my father had actually enjoyed the war and I think it was a great anti-climax for him to join in the national rehabilitation and to settle back into life in a very different England. He had those great pre-war racing days to climb down from too. I know for a fact that he would have loved to have stayed in the R.A.F. and it would have been very good for him if he had been allowed to. The Force might have recognised and rewarded his qualities of order and meticulous work more than did the dreadful maelstrom of post-war British industry. Instead, he threw himself into advancing his professional knowledge with the same alacrity with which he had approached racing and the Royal Air Force.
The relatively irresponsible days of his racing life were gone. He enjoyed work in his new profession, and now had a family to support. I think he gravitated to a habit of hard work and long hours as the best way to prove his responsibility and to provide the support.
My mother was the sister of his old friend and business partner, Tommy Bullus. My father had little time left from his work to be head of the family and from around 1950 my mother had some kind of a mental illness that hung over the whole family like a black cloud for many years. She suffered for the rest of her life, and we never knew when bouts of rage and despair would strike. At times I would feel terribly sad for her but any sympathy was always violently rebuffed, leaving me annoyed and feeling useless to help her. Too often her delusions of persecution became just boring rantings, and I would get out of the house. It was an impossible situation for my father who knew there was something wrong but did not know how to deal with it. She thought that everyone was plotting against her, and therefore refused to talk to anyone, and especially doctors. People were ignorant of mental illness in those days and something like this strange behaviour was often swept under the carpet. I well remember my parents' terrible rows, and my father losing patience with the poor woman's delusions. At times she felt there was no escape from the watching eyes; cornered, she would fight back.
Me on the IOMSPC ferry 1949, school cap, not yet popular flasher mack and sandals, nothing much to be expected here
My mother, Thora Catherine Williams
It was not until many years later just before her death that it was found that a very mild sedative would rid her of all delusions, and the very intelligent, pleasant and well-read person returned to us.
I have had asthma and eczema all my life. Both are mild problems now because of the astonishing advances in medicine, but in childhood both were pretty debilitating for me - and created extra problems for my parents. I seldom seemed to be at school, but I am always pretty cheesed off when I recall my mother telling me, as an adult, that she had kept me from Alleyne's Grammar School, Luton Technical College and from Hatfield Technical College because of my health. I had passed the eleven plus and later entrance exams for each, but somehow it was thought the new Barclay's Secondary Modern School in Stevenage would serve me better. Apparently absence from a poor education was thought to be better than absence from a better one. The family's move from Hertfordshire to Bexley, and Blackfen Secondary Modern, in Kent disrupted my education anyway, so wondering what might have been is pointless, but sometimes, when I am feeling particularly stupid for whatever reason, I find myself doing just that. I have had more good opportunities in my life than almost anyone I know, but it seems I invariably chose the wrong path, except for that early and perverse one chosen by my mother.
I remember very little of my childhood with my mother, except for the incessant recurrence of her affliction, my two ailments, and an incident that is snagged irritatingly in my mind. I was good at technical drawing at my new school, and I thought I was good at ordinary drawing as well. I did a self portrait at home and I was very pleased with it, until I was bitterly hurt when my mother could not stop laughing when I proudly showed it to her.
We had mother and son physical contact only once that I can recall. For her, it was a few moments of despair of her persecution; for me, my inability to comprehend or to help; and then she realised she was being embraced by one of the ‘enemy’, and I was pushed away. She would look after me and apply ointment to the eczema, so I suppose she was a good nurse. She made good flap-jacks and shortbread. But that was it. I only remember her affliction.
I remember the name of my primary school teacher, Miss Robinson. I remember going to school on the train to Stevenage, and traipsing past the Thomas Alleyne Grammar School gates en route to Barclay's Secondary Modern. I also remember that the teachers at Barclays were friendly and easy to learn from when I was there. And I even remember the headmaster's name, Mr. Osborn. I remember watching hundreds of aircraft passing directly over our sports field on their way to a post-war fly-past over London; batting, bowling and stinging hands from catching the cricket ball. Mostly I remember my bicycles and going to Silverstone on the pillion of the Vincent-HRD Black Shadow with my hands holding imaginary handlebars on my father's thighs and pretending to be Geoff Duke.
My father got a fabulous racing bike for me. He had to fix wooden blocks on the pedals so that I could reach them even with the saddle at its lowest. It was a Carlton, made at Worksop near Nottingham, and now part of the Raleigh Group. My benefactor was D.R. O'Donovan who was still with the company for whom he had talent-spotted my father in 1928. I only met him once to thank him for the bicycle and he was the first of the many charming Irishmen that I was to meet later in my life.
I did not blame him for supplying the bike with a fixed wheel. Although I soon learned to use the brakes too, the fixed wheel was a help to beat all-comers in the slow cycle race (a race for which my asthma qualified me well). The fixed wheel was not a help, however, in my trying to emulate my idols Geoff Duke and Bob McIntyre on the corners. I had to time my cornering - which, above all, is what I liked to do - according to when the inner pedal was about to strike the tarmac. My cornering line was like the edge of a three-penny bit.
One day my timing went all wrong on a favourite left hand bend and the left pedal came down on to the road so hard that I was thrown high into the air; the bystander who led me home said he estimated my altitude had been six feet. Kids did not wear hard hats or jeans then. I looked like I had been filed with a rasp - red raw with lots of corners shaved off. I was ten years old, but I recall no hesitation to ride again.
I used to go to some woods near Knebworth and set out different race circuits. It used to puzzle me when some of the other kids would cheat by taking short-cuts. I could not understand why they would avoid the fun of negotiating each of the corners as fast as they could. We had long jump competitions from the edge of a ‘bomb hole’.
I am not imagining this or making it up. My approach to riding on the road, on the race track and, necessarily, in the Isle of Man TT was the same for each and it was born there in the woods near Knebworth. Judging by how few of my peers had the same fascination with getting round a corner quickly, it is not a common one.
I designed a race circuit around our back gardens of the successive family houses - first in Knebworth and then in Bexley.
I did so many laps on the first circuit that the hairpin built up a banking on the gravel drive over which my long-suffering father in his Ford Anglia had to lurch morning and evening. His natural irritation with this was added to by seeing the racing line across the lawn he had worked so hard to lay.
The later circuit in the Bexley garden included a long straight that ended with a stretch along a pebble-dash wall and through a narrow door into the garage. One day I came down the straight flat out, and got it all wrong approaching the garage door. I scraped my right hand along the wall, hit the other handlebar on the garage door frame and landed in a painful and bloody heap in the middle of the garage floor. This did not put me off either.
Even in those austere years my father did have fun at Vincent - motorcycles do that! The racing version of the 1000cc V-twin was given the fabulous name of Black Lightning. The bike was sometimes used for record attempts, but whatever the intention they had to be tested and who better to do that than my father! There were, of course, few places to test a high speed motorcycle, but my father found a half-decent stretch of road between Letchworth and the A1 only a few miles north of Stevenage. He and his helper one day were apprehended by what my father called, ‘the rozzer on his bicycle’ as they were putting the Black Lightning back on a trailer after testing it. ‘I've been watching you from the hill over there and I reckon you be doing more than sixty! I'm going to do you if I catch you again!’ Jack had been doing 140 mph, in fact. With open pipes!
My father was invited by the Associated Motor Cycles Company to replace Matt Wright at AJS, and in late Autumn 1953 we moved to Bexley in Kent. I think he was in his element as Racing Development Engineer in charge of a Racing Department with the remit to make two real racing motorcycles into winners. He had about half-a-dozen technicians to help to do this. The racing motorcycles were the 500cc twin-cylinder E95 that had been redesigned as a normally aspirated development of the previous AJS E90 ‘Porcupine’ which originally was to have been supercharged. The latter was so-named because instead of cooling fins it had spines allowing more access to the cylinder head for cooling air. It had horizontal twin-cylinders but the E95 had its cylinders at 45 degrees. The E95 was actually a very different design because of these changes, but it has somehow retained the name Porcupine.
He had three top flight riders in Rod Coleman, Bob McIntyre and Derek Farrant. When Rod Coleman returned from his home in New Zealand in March 1954 ready for the new season, he was disappointed when he met my father and asked what had been done to the bikes over the winter. ‘Not much, I'm afraid,’ he said. ‘Other than the pannier fuel tanks to reduce frontal area and a small change to the frames, we have not had much time to do anything else.’ However, Rod's disappointment was shortlived because he was delighted when he rode them. ‘They are very different motorcycles! Why do they feel so different?’ My father said mildly that he thought it might be because he had made sure that everything was made to drawing specification and that they were assembled correctly.
My father and Rod Coleman congratulate each other after Rod's victory in the 1954 Isle of Man Junior TT and my father's AJS 1-2. Between them Derek Farrant, who was second, and my father's friend and predecessor at AJS, Matt Wright.
The E95 was nevertheless not as reliable as it should have been, and Rod did poorly in the 500cc class of the World Championship. However, although my father was not as enthusiastic about the 7R3 350cc (which had two exhaust valves and only one inlet valve) it was reliable and Rod won the 1954 Junior TT and came third in the 350cc class of the World Championship. This should have been seen as a promising and even successful year, but the awful people on the Board of Associated Motor Cycles pulled the works team out of racing at the end of 1954 leaving only the Matchless G45 and the two-valve 7R AJS (so-called Boy Racer) for my father to work on. These were real racing machines and were made in small batches each year for sale to the public. Together with the 500cc and 350cc Manx Nortons of the time they were the back-bone of the British road racing sport.
My father was bitterly disappointed by the scrapping of the E95 which he knew to have great potential, but was not so unhappy to lose the 7R3 which he thought had its priorities wrong. If there were to be three valves, two of them should be inlet valves - not exhaust - and while they were at it, the engine could have had four valves. He had to be content with development of the 7R which he said was a good engine. He was awarded his coveted Membership of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (MIMechE) for his Paper, The Development of a Single Cylinder Racing Motorcycle’. The Paper described his cam design methods, his design and use of his rig for the development of the inlet port (more of which later) and his suspension damper comparator rig.
Meanwhile, I went to Blackfen Secondary Modern School for Boys. The school was split into two halves about a mile apart. I always thought this was a good system which should be copied today because we had lots of exercise racing from one to the other on our bicycles.
I made the links, bearings and side-thrust washers and was just about to start on the telescopic dampers. I asked the teacher where I could get the springs from and he asked, in passing, what I was doing about the front brake. I had not thought of this, but realised that I would have to fit a drum brake. The whole project was considerably delayed by having to save up to buy one, but it was worthwhile having to work out how to arrange the spokes and build the hub into the wheel.
I also made some very narrow handlebars with some hacked short tube, some nuts and bolts and 11/2”x 1/4” aluminium strip. They taught me two things: that strip is not strong in twist and that metal fatigue results from continual reversals. One day I found that my metalwork teacher had broken them intentionally, because luckily he happened to see that the aluminium would have fractured as I rode it.
The only other things I remember of the whole of my secondary education was a challenge for a playground fight, being whacked on the shin by a teacher when playing hockey, and a brilliant away cricket match in which I was highest scorer, a great catch, and three wickets as a bowler. I opened the batting for the school team (cricket as quite a slow sport was quite well suited to my asthma). The ‘honour’ of opening was largely because nobody else wanted it, but I did because as soon as I was out I would go to the play ground and race round an improvised track defined by drain gratings and corners of games white boundary lines. Playing away provided a variety of track designs that I could make as challenging as I liked. I remember one type was a right-hand approach to a slow left-hander where I would make the front tyre scrub as I pulled the bike from banking right to banking left with the front brake on. These were serious sessions which were the cause of many cuts, grazes and bruises to knees, elbows and hands, and my main memory of life at secondary school.
Port Erin beach 1949: a bit flat-footed but I was quite good at slow games.
I think this idea had some merit but, as it was executed in 1954, both handlebar and suspension system had some serious design flaws
I read mainly low-grade adventure books for boys and only a few good ones like Treasure Island, Sherlock Holmes and The Thirty-Nine Steps. I wish I had found more good books because I read quite a lot during my bouts of asthma and eczema. I played a lot of chess from books. When we were at Knebworth I even entered a chess tournament but did not know that I could have joined a chess club. The tournament was six miles away at Welwyn. I cycled there, and after carelessly giving away my queen in the first game, I cycled home, stupidly not realising that there were more games I could have played.
Nobody realised that my ailments receded when I was happily messing about with bikes. Later, when I was completely engrossed in racing, the eczema disappeared almost completely. The cure was occupational therapy; bicycles and motorcycles kept me busy. The little that remained was, and still is, just a bit of a nuisance.
My asthma and eczema were a constant nuisance to my parents too. I remember only three holidays; two in the Isle of Man, one on the Norfolk Broads. I cannot recall any attacks in the Island but the Broads was misery for me and probably for them too. It was clear to me though that I was OK near my bikes. I was not allergic to them.
Before one of the Isle of Man holidays for the Manx Grand Prix I nagged my father to take my wonderful Carlton bicycle. I had visions of riding around the TT course. I must have been such a pain and how he got the bicycle into the Ford Anglia I cannot imagine with all the other luggage we had. However I did not have enough puff to do the TT lap and only managed about a mile.
I contented myself with racetracks on Port Erin's beach, completely discounting my father's warnings. I loved it but I suffered later when I had to clean the sand and salt from all the bearings - just as he had predicted. I was not happy about this, because the weather was cold and he would not help me except to give me the tools to strip and reassemble everything. It was my first lesson as a mechanic.
The magic of the Isle of Man TT must have hit me on one of those holidays. The night journey to get the early morning ferry; my first sight of the Liver Building on a grey morning by the grey Mersey estuary; a sleepy boy mesmerised by the churning wake below the ship's stern, then charmed by the first sight of the misty, mysterious land on the horizon which slowly crystallised to become the Isle of Man. The charm and sense of expectancy of that sea crossing to The Island’ never left me.
I was fascinated by the lean, stripped-down motorcycles being pushed past the crowds at scrutineering. To the racing teams it was a chore (I know!) but it impressed me as part of a holy ritual. The motorcycles looked so purposeful and physically fit, as if they themselves were alive and ready for the contest; the number plates and fly screens; the different shaped but huge fuel tanks; the racing seats and tail fairings; the colours, too; silver grey AJS, silver and black Norton, red Guzzi.
My abiding memory was not of the end of the TT but the start. We were at the 33rd Milestone. It was so quiet. My father told me to listen for the bang in Douglas below us that signalled the start of the race. He told me that the bikes would not come around together so to listen for the first one as it came towards us over the Mountain. At last I heard it - at the Verandah - and the sound faded. I heard it again - at the 32nd - and it faded. Then it was suddenly with us - and gone in a flash - at thrilling speed! Was it then that I was hooked? I think it was!
Then I became what I can only suppose was the worst sort of adolescent - a stage when some young people become somehow off-set from human, and completely self-centred. I became obsessed with all sorts of things.