About Me

Bill Munro

A Londoner by birth, I started driving a cab for a living in 1972 and I’ve been doing so ever since. I’m the third generation of my family in the trade: my grandfather drove a horse cab in Brighton before moving to London to drive one of the early motor cabs. My late father did the Knowledge of London in 1933, in nine months, learning the streets by riding a pushbike around them. Some of my earliest childhood memories are of riding in my father’s Oxford cab, of the small garage in Brixton where he kept it and of the London General Cab Company’s massive garage near the Oval cricket ground in South London. Some of my other early memories are of my grandmother’s grocer’s shop in Brixton, set in a small corner between a pub and a row of Victorian terraced houses. Both the shop and the houses were demolished to make way for a council estate. The pub building still stands, but is no longer a pub.

I spent much of the 1970s and early 1980s involved with carriage driving and in and around the riding club world, but eventually had to choose between horses and a mortgage: the mortgage won. After abandoning an attempt at a career change into the hospitality industry I stuck with cab driving, but also took up writing, at first for the cab trade press. After a couple of years of writing a regular column for ‘Taxi’, London’s largest trade paper I wrote my first book, ‘Carbodies, the Complete Story’ about the Coventry company that started out as a jobbing coachbuilder and went on to become London Taxis International, the only maker of purpose-built taxis in the world.

After writing four more books, mostly about military vehicles for Crowood and several magazine articles, I ned to my core subject, the London taxi and produced, again for Crowood ‘A Century of London Taxis’, which was published in 2005. This was followed in 2008 by a re-write of Shire Books’ ‘The London Taxi’ in collaboration with its original author, Nick Georgano. In 2009 I published ‘Taxi Jubilee- 50 Years of the Austin FX4 London Taxi’ under my own imprint, Earlswood Press.

In October 2003 I took, and completed in two years a Certificate Course in Creative Writing at Sussex University, with the aim of adding fiction writing to my list of achievements. Though no works have been complete, the period of study undoubtedly improved the general standard of my writing.

Until the end of 2010, I edited ‘Vintage Taxi’, the magazine of the London Vintage Taxi Association, both compiling and typesetting it and writing some of the content. This has put me in touch with owners of preserved historic London taxis and with many people associated with the London cab trade. I gave this up to concentrate on expanding Earlswood Press and to write more of my own books.

I owe a huge debt of thanks to five people who have helped me along the way in my writing and publishing career. In chronological order, they are: Stuart Pessok, until the end of 2011 the editor of 'Taxi' newspaper, who gave me a regular column in the paper, where I was able to develop my journalistic skills: Melvyn Hiscock, who, as commissioning editor for Crowood Press took a gamble on me, a complete unknown with an obscure manuscript, 'Carbodies, the Complete Story' and launched my book writing career: Tony Beadle, then editor of Triumph World, who took on several articles by me and helped me develop my magazine writing: Les Bond, my father-in-law for his support for Earlswood Press and, last but by no means least, his daughter, my wife Karen for her unending and constructively critical support for all my writing and publishing endeavours.

Personal Interests

Ballroom Dancing

I met my wife Karen through swing dancing, (principally lindy hop and balboa) but soon decided to take up ballroom dancing, which we did just before its great revival, triggered by BBC-TV’s ‘Strictly Come Dancing’. Although the level of our ability is nowhere near that of the professionals on ‘Strictly’, we enjoy regular lessons and social dancing. We still go to the occasional swing dance, but where we live now, in east Surrey is too far away from the major London or smaller south coast venues for us to continue on a regular basis. We are now concentrating on Argentinean Tango, having been lucky to find excellent teachers in a venue within reasonably easy reach.

Good Food and Cooking

My attempt at a move into the hospitality industry resulted in my taking a basic City and Guilds qualification in catering and this consolidated the love of good food that had been with me all my life. We cook mostly Italian style at home, because it is quick, simple, is best when the freshest ingredients are used and if it’s done properly, is very economical. What more could you want?

In our travels, we have found that British food, by comparison to that of France and Italy in particular has improved immeasurably over the past decade or so, and we find that those countries have their share of indifferent or even poor food shops and restaurants. But where the French and Italians do score is in having and promoting with pride a great tradition of national cuisine. In Britain, we promote everyone else’s cooking but fail to celebrate our own. Finding a truly British restaurant is difficult: even our pubs, which in my opinion ought to be bastions of good British food, offer, as a general rule just about everything else: even most of the puddings are foreign! Come on, British restaurateurs- fish & chips, steak pie and roast beef are simply not enough; we have many superb British dishes to be proud of!

Interested in old London taxis?
Then join the London Vintage Taxi Association
Click www.lvta.co.uk for more details

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