Description
By Denis 'Jenks' Jenkinson and other famous motoring contemporariies,, ISBN: 9781899870223, 224 Pages, published 1997, 2nd hand book, very good condition
- the classic auto-biography / biography of one of motor sport's greatest characters !
His full name was Denis Sargent Jenkinson, but to his friends he was simply 'Jenks', while to his many thousands of devoted readers he was just DSJ, the initials with which he invariably signed off his avidly read columns and reports in the monthly magazine Motor Sport, for which he was the famed Continental Correspondent for more than 40 years.
But Jenks was much more than that. Short, stocky, and with a flowing red beard, he looked — and was — one of life's genuine eccentrics, but he was as much a part of the motor racing scene as the starting grid and the chequered flag. Uniquely amongst motor racing writers, he was considered by the drivers and racing hierarchy about whom he wrote so perceptively and enthusiastically as 'one of us', and rightly so because he had been out there and done it, which meant that he knew exactly what he was talking — and writing — about, having experienced it all at first-hand.
His own competition exploits — on both two and four wheels — were mainly confined to minor events, but he had also taken part in motor sport at the highest level, first as the athletic passenger to Sidecar World Champion Eric Oliver, and later as the famed navigator who pointed Stirling Moss to perhaps the greatest of all his motor racing triumphs — the record-shattering victory in the 1955 Mille Miglia round-Italy sports car race.
Jenks' famous report 'from the cockpit' of that brilliant success is just one of the memorable pieces of writing which form the nucleus of this book of motor racing nostalgia, along with 50 columns of reminiscences which originally he wrote for the journal of the British Racing Drivers' Club, but had subsequently edited and supplemented with additional material for this book prior to his final illness.
Only in the aftermath of his death, in November 1996, did the full extent of his influence on other writers become apparent through the many pages of tributes which filled newspapers and magazines during the following weeks. Now, some of the most distinguished names in motor racing journalism, who became his close friends, have contributed their personal memories of a remarkable colleague who had such a rare ability for communicating his unquenchable enthusiasm for motor sport to others.
Jenks, therefore, is a book both by and about one of the most revered motor racing writers, and for motor sports enthusiasts everywhere, and especially his countless thousands of loyal readers, it will reawaken memories of some great sporting occasions and of the unique way in which DSJ went about following and writing about them.
Published by Motor Racing Publications Limited
in collaboration with
the British Racing
Drivers' Club
