Welcome to the first regular newsletter of the Michael Sedgwick Memorial Trust. The aim of our newsletters, compiled from the contributions of various Trustees, is to tell everyone who is fascinated by motoring history about our activities and bring you news from the world of automotive books.
www.michaelsedgwicktrust.co.uk
WHAT IS THE MICHAEL SEDGWICK MEMORIAL TRUST?
The Michael Sedgwick Memorial Trust is a charity, not a membership organisation, run by volunteer Trustees who between them have huge experience of writing and publishing books. The Trust exists to encourage new and original research into any aspect of motoring history and to offer financial and other assistance to authors and publishers.
The Trust wishes to see research into motoring history reach the public domain, through publication as books, other printed media or on the internet. The Trust gives advice to would-be authors and tries to ‘connect’ authors and publishers. The Trust believes that even books with very limited sales potential should be published if the subject matter is worthy and the research is new and comprehensive.
In cases where a publisher or author believes that a subject merits publication but is unlikely to be a viable commercial proposition, the Trust can often offer some financial help to bridge the gap or enable an author to self-publish.
Where research is of a very specialist nature and not commercially viable, the Trust may offer funding to assist with research provided that copies of resulting texts are lodged in selected specialist libraries, County Record Offices and possibly published on the internet.
WHO WAS MICHAEL SEDGWICK?
Michael E. Ware remembers Britain’s greatest motoring historian
When I started working at the Montagu Motor Museum at Beaulieu in 1963 I got to know Michael Sedgwick, who had been Curator of the Museum since 1958. Michael was an extraordinary man who came from a background of Winchester College and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and then went into teaching. His hobby was motoring history and his particular love was Fiats.
After Lord Montagu launched Veteran & Vintage magazine in 1956, Michael immediately found an outlet for his researches. When Lord Montagu was let down over the compilation of the first Museum catalogue, Michael was tasked with its production and I am told completed it in three days of virtually non-stop work – his employer was impressed! Living in a flat at the top of Palace House, Michael researched many different books for Lord Montagu, as well as helping edit Veteran & Vintage magazine and writing for it.
In these early years he sometimes went abroad to give talks to motor clubs and groups prior to a tour by Lord Montagu. Michael always referred these travels as his ‘John the Baptist Act’ – preparing the way for the Lord. He loved the research and writing aspect of his job as Curator but hated management and mundane tasks such as showing VIP visitors around the Museum.
In 1966 he left to devote himself to his writing, at first living at the Beaulieu Road Hotel and later in Midhurst, West Sussex, but his links with the Museum remained strong as Lord Montagu asked him to become its Director of Research. He wrote books and many magazine articles under his own name as well as playing a major part in the writing and research behind Nick Georgano’s Complete Encyclopaedia of the Motorcar, followed by a sister volume on motor sport. He was in great demand writing car auction catalogues.
Michael’s greatest attribute was his memory, a true photographic one. To answer a query he could almost quote a page number in Autocar. His forte was research in great detail and somehow this all got stored away in his head.
Another of his great skills was as an event commentator. Given a motoring event where those taking part did a cavalcade in front of the crowd, Michael would describe each and every vehicle from memory, only referring to the programme to name the owner. In later life I am told he even did commentaries on fashion shows for his then lady friend, Helen, even if his own attire was invariably untidy.
He was probably Britain’s finest motoring historian and the world lost a great writer and researcher when he suddenly died in 1983 aged 57. Some of his close friends set up a Charitable Trust, the Michael Sedgwick Memorial Trust, with the purpose of encouraging new motoring research and helping to get such research published.
I was asked to give the address at Michael’s funeral. I told the story of how each letter he wrote, and he wrote thousands, had a reference at the top of it, the make-up of which was known only to Michael. He told me once that if you had the prefix ‘pst’ at the front of the reference number, he considered you a pest. I often wondered how many people went home after the funeral and looked carefully at letters they had received from him.
The Michael Sedgwick Memorial Trust is a FREE service for automotive authors and publishers – no membership required!
The Trust offers:
Need help? Do not hesitate to contact us.
JUST PUBLISHED!
Louis Coatalen biography by Oliver Heal
The most recent book published with the support of the Michael Sedgwick Memorial Trust is Louis Coatalen: Engineering Impresario of Humber, Sunbeam, Talbot and Darracq, the first comprehensive biography of this influential figure in the British motor industry. Written by Oliver Heal, a Sunbeam enthusiast who is married to one of Coatalen’s granddaughters, it is the result of 20 years of research.
Coatalen was born a Frenchman but spent much of his adult life in Britain and took British nationality. He emerges from this biography as a man full of Gallic charm and wit, determined to obtain success for his products by whatever means necessary. His perseverance and a certain lack of scruples, his ability to recognise a good idea and recruit talented individuals, combined with his undoubted leadership skills, made him a major figure in motoring history.
Coatalen’s successes and failures are traced from his birth in Brittany, his training as an engineer in France, through to his rise to fame in the British motor industry, bringing success to both Humber and Sunbeam before the First World War. His personal motor racing story is told as well as that of his team management of cars and drivers that included the very first British car to win a Grand Prix and others that broke the World Land Speed Record on five occasions. During his later career after returning to France he built up the Lockheed Hydraulic Brake Company and also devoted much time and money to developing a powerful, but ultimately unsuccessful, diesel aero engine.
His somewhat complicated private life involving four wives, drug addiction and some injudicious investments are also put on record for the first time.
Released last month, this book is published by Unicorn Publishing Group at £40.
SELF-PUBLISHING
It’s not as difficult as you may think… Ian Dussek advises
Self-publishing is particularly suitable for authors whose subjects, although of great interest to motoring writers and historians, are not always attractive to commercial publishers and high street booksellers, which prefer publications that attract large sales. It is nonetheless a very practical and enjoyable way of getting your book on the market, as I know from experience.
My book HRG: The Sportsman’s Ideal first appeared in 1985, published by Motor Racing Publications with support from the Michael Sedgwick Memorial Trust; in fact it was the first book to receive the Trust’s backing. At that time I had to hold back with some of the stories because so many HRG personnel were still around, including the formidable Miss Grace Leather who more or less ran the company in its later years and wielded her blue pencil on my manuscript. All these people eventually passed away and by 2009 I felt there was room for a new edition in which I would have free range to tell the unexpurgated story.
As Motor Racing Publications considered an updated edition to be rather risky, I decided to publish it myself. It was now a much longer and completely different book, up from 176 pages to 380, with lots of new illustrations. I needed help with the page layout – not something I could do with my basic computer skills – and turned to a company in Exeter, Short Run Press, which not only designed the book but also printed it, all to my considerable satisfaction. As befits their name, they were able to do a modest print run, 300 copies, for a price that I judged reasonable.
When it came to selling the book, I did all that myself, running my own despatch department from my own warehouse – a room at home. I started with 300 copies as I believed that was the number I could confidently sell, and priced the book at a figure (£35) that I knew would provide a modest profit by the time I had sold out. Fellow enthusiasts in the HRG Association were my main market, needless to say, but I also sold copies through other channels, including some orders from Waterstones. Once again the Michael Sedgwick Memorial Trust provided help, with a loan that eased my cashflow, and in turn I have been able to pay back the loan plus royalties on sales ever since. I even did a reprint of 150 copies and now, 10 years after I embarked, my stock is down to the last couple of dozen.
For many years I have been a Trustee of the Michael Sedgwick Memorial Trust and I am always happy to try to assist any budding self-publishers. One major aspect of the self-publishing process that frequently concerns newcomers is the mechanics of book production: what size, what format, how many photographs, how many copies to be printed, how to do the costing and accounting? And then there are other mysterious essentials to be understood, such as copyright in photographs and the mandatory identification provided by the International Standard Book Number (ISBN). All this can seem quite daunting initially but the Trust provides simple guides, including basic financial step-by-step sheets, to help self-publishers through the maze.
Everyone has a book in them. The Michael Sedgwick Memorial Trust can help you make yours a reality.
SIR STIRLING MOSS OBE
There can be few in the world of motoring who have not heard the sad news of the passing of Sir Stirling Moss (seen here on the left of this photograph of the car and team that finished 2nd in the 1952 Monte Carlo Rally, his first attempt at this event) on 12th April at the age of 90. Whilst the Michael Sedgwick Memorial Trust has not supported the publication of any of the many books about the man himself, it is inevitable that his life and career has had an effect which has been recorded in other books.
Most recently the winner of the Michael Sedgwick Award for 2019, The All-British Marendaz Special by Graham Skillen has recorded that Stirling visited the Marendaz works in Maidenhead at the age of six or seven with his Father. Both of Stirling's parents, Alfred and Aileen were competitive drivers of Marendaz cars in Trials, Rallies and Races. Alfred Moss also financed Marcus Marendaz in the move of his manufacturing from Brixton to Maidenhead and he and his Wife owned several Marendaz Specials.
Back in 2009, the MSMT supported the publication by Herridge & Sons of Sunbeam-Talbot and Alpine in Detail by Anders Clausager. This emphasises the point that unlike modern day F1 drivers, Stirling competed in many disciplines and the book records the part of his rallying career that used these cars as shown in our headline photograph.
BOOK REVIEW
Alan Shattock’s history of RGS Atalanta, reviewed by Bob Cartwright
This book, published in 2019 and supported by the Michael Sedgwick Memorial Trust, is a low-volume production, like its subject. Low volume does not mean low quality, however, and the book is well written and designed.
As befits a marque named after a Greek Goddess, the Atalanta has mythical status amongst aficionados of 1930s sports cars. Starting with a Gough engine as used in the Frazer Nash, the Atalanta later became an Anglo-American hybrid through using, like Allard, the Lincoln Zephyr V12 engine. A chapter summarises the known cars and history of this enterprise with help from Barry Ward, who owns a superb saloon example of the V12.
Most of the book is devoted to the marque’s post-war evolution, when the initials RGS, for Richard Gaylord Shattock (the author’s father), were added to the Atalanta name. For completeness a biography of RGS himself is included along with the author’s childhood memories of this colourful character and his projects. After buying an Atalanta chassis from the works to make a special of his own design, RGS went on to acquire the remaining stock of Atalanta spares and a commercial garage for the construction of parts for others to build their specials and, if desired, complete cars. Having found a basis for the difficult-to-source mechanicals, engines and gearboxes added to the builder’s taste, the challenge for the special builder was the bodywork. Here RGS was a pioneer, beating all others to be the first to commercially market a glass-fibre shell for the homebuilder with moulds taken off an HWM body. This innovation helped fledgling car manufacturers: Shattock’s bodies were used on early TVRs, Bucklers and an Allard as well as many specials.
The initial special was built by RGS to participate in races and hillclimbs and this continued until it reached a pinnacle where he beat the works Jaguar and Aston Martin teams to win the unlimited class in the 1955 British Empire Trophy for sports cars. RGS later retired from racing to concentrate on manufacture and his subsequent ventures are also documented in the book, including the cars of John A. Grifiths (JAGs), who worked from the RGS garage.
Access to family photographs and memories has helped make this a complete record but this is not to underestimate the research into every traceable car produced with RGS Atalanta components or bodies. This is a comprehensive history of an interesting and hitherto largely unknown participant in the 1950s racing and sports car scene.
A PRIME DESTINATION FOR RESEARCHERS
Patrick Collins explains the resources available at the
National Motor Museum reference library
Located in the Collections Centre at Beaulieu, the reference library of the National Motor Museum Trust (NMMT) is one of the largest collections of motoring literature in Europe. Founded in 1960 by the late Edward, 3rd Baron Montagu, the library had as its nucleus the collection of early motoring literature originally owned by his father, pioneering motorist John Scott Montagu. From those small beginnings has grown an impressive resource.
The statistics are staggering. The total library holdings number over 300,000 items including nearly 14,000 books, 7,000 bound volumes of magazines, 100,000 loose magazines, 70,000 items of sales literature, 23,000 instruction books, 10,000 event programmes and over 7,500 workshop manuals covering cars, motorcycles and commercial vehicles. The earliest publications in the collection pre-date the motoring age and include bound volumes of carriage builders’ magazines from the 1880s and books on road construction dating back to the 1820s.
Particular strengths of the collection include complete, or near complete, runs of popular titles such as Autocar, Motor, Light Car, Commercial Motor, Motorcycling and Autosport as well as much rarer journals such as Car Illustrated, Motor Traction, Motoring Illustrated and Motor Car Journal. The collection of sales literature covers virtually the whole of motoring history starting with an early De Dion Bouton tricycle brochure of 1889.
Making this extensive and ever-expanding collection available for research was the very reason for the library’s establishment in 1960 and continues to be so to this day. The National Motor Museum Trust’s Motoring Research Service exists to provide a one-stop shop for access to those parts of the Museum’s collections not on view to the public in the main Museum building. For personal callers, the Museum’s reading room, which is dedicated to the memory of Michael Sedgwick, is available by appointment, giving access not only to the library collection but also the NMMT’s vast photographic library and motoring archive. More details on all these facilities, together with opening times and charges, are available at nationalmotormuseum.org.uk.
Do you have a motoring book idea?
You may have an idea for a publication which would fill a gap in motoring knowledge but do not have the skills to undertake it yourself. Tell us about it – perhaps we can help.
Contact the MSMT Secretary: msegwickmt@gmail.com
