My Interests

Automotive

Beardmore Cars & Taxis

A beautifully restored Beardmore 12/30 tourer of 1924

Naturally, Beardmore taxicabs feature prominently in my books on taxicab history, but there were other motor vehicles that bore William Beardmore ’s name. Before the Great War, William Beardmore, later Sir William Beardmore, Lord Invernairn was the richest man in Scotland. After a magnificent contribution to the war effort, when he was named as ‘The Field Marshall of Industry’ he turned his attention to the field of transport. He already owned the car company Arrol-Johnston, and turned three factories he had acquired for armaments factories during the Great War over to car production under his own name, including the taxicab factory in Paisley. He also built lorries and acquired a motorcycle factory and an interest in Thorneycroft. Five Beardmore private cars, fifty-four ‘Precision’ motorcycles and four lorries are known to survive, as well as over a dozen prewar taxicabs, at least one locomotive and a tugboat with a Beardmore diesel engine.

I have written magazine articles on Beardmore cars, for ‘The Automobile’ (‘Clydeside Colossus’, September 2002)) and for ‘Automobile Quarterly’ (‘Great Scot’, Vol 43, no1) and for ‘Classic Van & Pickup’, on a truck built to test a 6-cylinder Ford Zephyr engine for the new Mk7 taxicab (‘Unique and Fascinating’, September 2009)

Carbodies, Carbodies Ltd

A very rare restored 1934 Hillman Sports, with a body
designed and built originally by Carbodies

My first published book was about the Coventry company of Carbodies. I am still interested in the history of the firm and am always keen to hear from people who share that interest, whether they are keen on Triple-M MGs, old Hillmans, Austin Hereford and Somerset convertibles, Ford Zephyr, Consul and Cortina convertibles, Daimler Conquest Dropheads and Majestics, Austin taxis or whatever.

It never ceases to amaze me that, almost fourteen years after the book’s publication, there is still so much to discover. I’ve found out about an Austin 7 Ulster replica body that was definitely built by Carbodies, and a one-off Jowett Sports that might have been built by them. If you have questions to ask, are keen to share information or maybe you or a relative worked for the company, I’d love to hear from you.

Automotive Four-wheel Drive Systems

Three of the books I wrote for Crowood, ‘Jeep, from Bantam to Wranger’, ‘Humvee’ (both now out of print) and ‘The Alvis Saracen Family’ involved research into all-wheel drive systems. Part of the research into the Jeep book included a visit to Ricardo-FFD, the successor company to Harry Ferguson and Tony Rolt ’s FF Developments. This visit gave me a fascination for all-wheel-drive systems, principally for road cars.

I wrote two magazine articles on the topic of FFD’s work; one for ‘Classic American’ magazine on the AMC Eagle, ‘The Eagle’s Last Flight’, (March 2002) about that company’s specialist vehicle, the Eagle based on the Concord compact sedan that used FFD’s four-wheel drive system, and another for Triumph World magazine on the two four-wheel drive Triumph Stags produced by FFD in cooperation with GKN Components Ltd in the early 1970s.

Non-Automotive

Sir William Beardmore, Bart, knighted in 1914 for his services to shipbuilding

William and Elspeth Beardmore and Ernest Shackleton

One of my principal professional interests outside of the world of old cars and taxicabs is the life and works of the Glasgow-based industrialist Sir William Beardmore, Lord Invernairn. I am currently studying the nature of the relationship between Beardmore himself, his wife, Elspeth and his one-time employee, the Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton. In 1907, Beardmore loaned Shackleton £7000 towards his first Antarctic expedition and this gave Shackleton the credibility he needed to raise more money. Although Shackleton’s named the glacier in Antarctica that he climbed to reach ‘furthest south’ after Beardmore as a way of honouring him, he never repaid the loan, leaving Beardmore bitter and Elspeth, who had championed him, no doubt deeply embarrassed and hurt.

The History of London

I believe it is important to cast as wide a net as possible when researching a subject. In researching for my new book on the people of the London cab trade I have read several books on London’s history in order to understand why the trade attracted the people it did and in what environment they operated. The more I study London’s political, social and geographical make-up, the more fascinated I become about the city whose roads and famous places I know so well but whose background story I am gradually discovering

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

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