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Amazon.co.uk Review
Back Fire is a posthumous collection of Clark's columns for the magazine Classic Cars and other journals along with a few extracts from the infamous diaries.
If Mr Toad hadn't predated Alan Clark by some 21 years--The Wind in the Willows was published in 1908 and Clark born in 1929--you could make a good case for Clark's having been the model for Kenneth Grahame's daredevil, outrageous but loveable rogue. Conservative MP, historian, man about town, notorious womaniser--and at the same time fiercely loyal husband and father--Clark, who died in 1999, was the son of Lord (Kenneth) Clark, the art historian and broadcaster. He bought his first car, a six-and-a-half litre vintage Bentley, while he was still at Eton and only 17--it was typical of the stylish flamboyance he soon made his trademark.
Many a Jaguar, Rolls Royce, Porsche, Buick and Chevrolet followed. So did old Citroens, a VW Beetle and latterly a beloved and "totally reliable" Discovery. He was a collector, par excellence, who was addicted to the buying and selling of cars all his adult life. Every garage and enclosed space at Saltwood Castle, the family home in Kent, remains full of Clark's cars. Clark's son James writes in Back Fire that "Outside the family, I truly believe, cars were my father's greatest love". But he didn't approve of over-enthusiastic restoration. When he drove his 1920 Silver Ghost, of which there is a photograph in Back Fire on the 1993 Rolls Royce Enthusiasts Alpine Commemorative Run, a fellow competitor remarked, to Clark's amusement, that "if he can't afford to maintain his car properly he shouldn't be allowed on the event".
Whatever else Clark was or wasn't he was never dull and he was certainly a writer. "What do we want a classic car for? Showing off, of course. Nothing wrong with that; they are more idiosyncratic than beach jewellery." The prose hums along as expertly as the cars. --Susan Elkin
Product Description
Alan Clark was passionate about cars from an early age. He bought his first car - a secondhand 6.5 litre Bentley - while still a schoolboy at Eton and without a driving licence. By the time he was 24 he had been banned from driving three times, not only for speeding but in one instance for driving an open Buick Roadster with a girl on his lap. He dealt in 'classic' and vintage cars and soon built up an impressive stable of his own. One of his first published pieces of journalism appeared in the US magazine, Road and Track, for which he was briefly UK correspondent. 'Back Fire', the title of a column he wrote in Thoroughbred and Classic Cars magazine, ran for three years until his death in September 1999. Here Robert Coucher, former editor of the magazine, has collected Clark's motoring writings - among them previously untranscribed diary entries and some early memoirs, including driving his own R-R Silver Ghost in two Alpine rallies. He also contributes a revealing introduction. Alan Clark's elder son, James Clark - who has inherited his father's motoring enthusiasms - provides a Prologue; Alan Clark's widow, Jane writes a moving Afterword.
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Practically my earliest memory of childhood is standing anxiously (I would have been about five or six years old) on the quayside at Inverewe, having disembarked from one of the MacBrayne steamers, and seeing the two Rolls-Royces that my grandfather had sent to meet us - one for the passengers and one for the luggage - coming along on the far side of the loch, raising dust clouds on the unmade highland roads. Read the first page
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Practically my earliest memory of childhood is standing anxiously (I would have been about five or six years old) on the quayside at Inverewe, having disembarked from one of the MacBrayne steamers, and seeing the two Rolls-Royces that my grandfather had sent to meet us - one for the passengers and one for the luggage - coming along on the far side of the loch, raising dust clouds on the unmade highland roads. Read the first page
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