This edited article about Charles Rolls originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 249 published on 22 October 1966.

Charles S Rolls' return flight across the English Channel without landing, 2 June 1910

When the Honourable Charles Rolls arrived at Bournemouth aerodrome to take part in the much-publicised flying display, he was already a national hero. Only five weeks earlier, on 1st June, 1910, he had been the first aviator to make a two-way cross-Channel flight.

Rolls had set his heart on winning the alighting contest which was one of the highlights of the display. In it the pilots had to land on a white patch in the middle of a large circle. On 12th July, the second day of the air show, a blustery 20 miles-an-hour wind blew across the aerodrome.

As Rolls’s turn came to touch down on the white patch, he turned his plane at a height of a 100 feet and met the wind head-on.

He started a sharp descent – too sharp.

“There was a sickening snap,” wrote one of the eye-witnesses. “Some . . . parts of the tail-plane had given way . . . and then there was a thud. Rolls was down, under our very eyes, it seemed but a few paces away.”

At the age of 32, Charles Rolls, motor-car enthusiast, balloonist, and aviator, was dead. Today, his name lives on mainly through the car, the Rolls-Royce, which he helped to make world famous.

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This edited article about motor rallying originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 247 published on 8 October 1966.

The car was far from new, but the brothers Jogindar and Jaswant were proud of it.

They sat side by side in the tough, ruggedly-built Swedish Volvo, with, all around them, Europe’s leading rally drivers, ready for the start of the 13th East African Safari from Nairobi, Kenya. In the teeming rain it was impossible to tell the gleaming new cars from the old.

Jogindar and Jaswant Singh belonged to a Sikh family which had left India to settle in Kenya. Nairobi was their home town, and their greatest ambition was to be the first non-Europeans ever to win the Safari Rally.

In the rally list, they were to be first away at the start.

“What’s the weather forecast?” Jaswant asked his brother.

Jogindar grinned. “Floods and landslides all the way. Three thousand miles. I think we can take it – but can the car?”

There was no time for Jaswant to answer; they were flagged away into the night, leading a long stream of 85 cars signalled off at three-minute intervals from a ramp outside Nairobi City Hall.

From the moment they left the town, they were off the smooth road surfaces from which the teeming rain drained away. The Safari route was over rough tracks which, muddy and full of potholes even in the best of weather, had now turned into a sea of brown slime. The driving rain made it impossible to see the potholes until the wheels of the car crashed down into them with spine-jarring force, twisting the steering-wheel in the driver’s grasp and wrenching even the Volvo’s tough suspension.

As leaders, Jogindar and Jaswant saw nothing of their rivals until they reached a checkpoint in the morning.

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This edited article about David Coleman originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 244 published on 17 September 1966.

Aime Tschiffely by Ferdinando Tacconi

Young David Coleman was bored and miserable. It was a Christmas holiday, he had the flu, and the doctor had said he must stay in bed.

But he had a book to read, and its title was an intriguing one: Tschiffely’s Ride. Soon he forgot all about his boredom as he read of ‘the most amazing ride ever made by a man on horseback’.

It was in 1925 that Aime Tschiffely and his two Argentine Creole horses started their ‘impossible’ journey from Buenos Aires to New York. The equestrian experts of the time laughed in his face and called him a ‘mad-man’. No horse, they said, could possibly survive the rigorous climates of such countries as Chile and Peru. And as for climbing the massive Andes mountains . . .

But Tschiffely paid no heed to their warnings. And two years later, in 1927, he proved the scoffers wrong by jogging into New York city at the end of his 11,400-mile ride.

By the time David Coleman finished the book he had dismissed such trivial ailments as influenza. Then and there he vowed that one day, when he was old enough, he would make the same incredible journey himself.

Although David determined to stick as closely as possible to Tschiffely’s original route, he made one major change when he prepared for his endeavour. Instead of travelling on horseback, he decided to go by car: but not, as you might suppose, in a specially-equipped Land-Rover. His choice was a battered old Austin Seven.

Ever since his army and university days, he had been fascinated by vintage motorcars. He became a collector of Austin Sevens, and owned in all about 14 or 15 of them. But the model which most caught his eye was a 1925 Chummy.

He repaired the Chummy with parts taken from other forlorn Austins, and on 24th October he arrived at Buenos Aires.

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This edited article about the limousine originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 240 published on 20 August 1966.

Troubadors in Limoges by John Millar Watt

Two hundred and fifty miles south-west of Paris lies the large and modern city of Limoges, built around the remains of an ancient town that dates back to Roman times. In 1768 large deposits of kaolin (china clay) were discovered in the area, and there sprang up an industry which today produces some of the world’s finest porcelain china and decorative enamel work.

The surrounding countryside is hilly and the valleys are deep and thickly wooded, while small but rich meadows and well-tilled land show that agriculture is the predominant occupation.

In medieval times, this part of France was the home of the troubadours, the travelling minstrels who accompanied themselves on stringed instruments.

Limoges stands in the old province of Limousin – a name also given to a special kind of garment still worn by some of the country people. Like a large cloak, a limousine is made from black wool, and the person wearing it has complete protection against wind, cold and rain.

In the early days of motoring, France was one of the leading countries in car manufacture. The bodywork of these early automobiles was copied from the open horse carriages of the day. Passengers had to wrap themselves up in clothes that were as all-enveloping as a limousine cloak if they were to have a comfortable journey.

When glass windows and leather hoods were introduced into the body designs, people were protected from the weather and it became unnecessary for them to wear such bulky clothing.

The enclosing bodywork became known as a limousine because it was as protective as the cloak.

Nowadays the term has been replaced by saloon, or sedan, a word used to describe a car with a fixed roof and wind-up windows.

This edited article about the Victorian age originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 206 published on 25 December 1965.

Brunel follows the progress of his ambitious design for the largest steam ship in the world, the Great Eastern, as she is being built in the shipyard

The coming of the railways enabled goods from the manufacturing centres to be taken more rapidly to the ports for export overseas. When they arrived there they were put on ships that were as much a novelty as the trains that had brought them. Not long before, at the beginning of the century, all ships were propelled by sail, but now steam began to come into its own. Indeed, the steamship at first made more rapid progress than the locomotive.

The first British steamboat was launched on the Clyde in 1811, and before long trails of smoke marked every sea-coast horizon. In thirty years over six hundred steamships were built. In the year after Queen Victoria came to the throne the first iron vessel crossed the Atlantic, and four years later the Great Western steamship arrived one June morning in King’s Road, Bristol, from New York, having performed in twelve and a half days a passage which until then had normally taken a month. The first liner, in a strict sense, was the Britannia with which the Cunard Company began a regular fortnightly service to New York. The world of which industrial Britain was the centre was daily growing smaller.

As in so much else at the time this was only a beginning. In 1843 the Great Britain was provided with a screw-propeller, and then gradually iron gave place to steel. Later still the turbine engine, an invention scarcely less remarkable than that of the screw-propeller, was brought out.

The Royal Navy was slow to change from sail to steam, and when the Crimean War broke out in 1854 the entire British fleet consisted of wooden sailing ships, except for a few warships fitted with auxiliary engines and a number of steam tugs. What makes this the more astonishing is that since the introduction of the shell gun twenty-five years earlier, the wooden battleship had become so vulnerable as to have no fighting value at all.

One change led to another. As the ships grew larger the docks had to be made bigger, and this gave great advantages to the seaports where this was possible. Liverpool and London were the principal gainers.

In the eighteenth century Bristol had been a rival both to Liverpool and London, but such was no longer the case in the Victorian era. The city lay ten miles up a narrow and winding stream, and was the chief town of a rich valley in the West; its position in a fruitful agricultural district gave it a distinctly inland atmosphere in spite of its old and honourable connection with the sea. Its interests, too, were numerous, and by the end of the Victorian Age the manufactures of Bristol were more important than the commerce.

Liverpool, on the contrary, was a seaport and nothing much else. To the Liverpudlian the sea united rather than divided, and especially had this been the case before the coming of the railways when he looked on the River Mersey as his outlet to the world, rather than the muddy tracks which led from Liverpool across the bleakest of countrysides to other centres of population in Lancashire. As we have seen, the growing size of ships called for the enlargement and perfecting of the dock system, and by the time that Queen Victoria died, the Liverpool docks had become one of the wonders of the shipping world, while of every ten ships that sailed the seas one hailed from Liverpool.

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This edited article about Jo Siffert originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 806 published on 25th June 1977.

Spa-Francorchamps – the world’s fastest and most dangerous motor racing circuit. A few times each year this twisting section of road is closed off to the public for highly-bred 5-litre sports cars to be unleashed on the blind bends and tortuous straights of this Belgian circuit.

Spa is treacherous for three main reasons. One is its rough track surface, which is perfectly suitable for ordinary traffic but feels like a washboard at high speeds. Second is the length of the circuit. This makes tyre selection a problem for it can be raining at one end and perfectly dry at the other. The third hazard is the sheer speed the cars are able to attain in skilful and courageous hands.

The spectator at Spa is privileged if he can find a clear spot near the exit of one of the long, sweeping bends which characterise this circuit.

At Spa’s breakneck speeds, it does not take long for the cars to complete a lap. And the waiting is worthwhile if the result is the sight of a champion driver flashing past in his powerful car.

A few years ago, the star in the car could have been Jo Siffert, probably the finest sports car pilot of all time. He could have been seen flying along in his mighty J.W.-Gulf Porsche 917.

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This edited article about Enzo Ferrari originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 785 published on 29th January 1977.

Tazio Nuvolari driving an Alfa Romeo by Graham Coton

Lieutenant Francesco Baracca was Italy’s best known air ace of World War I, and when he was eventually shot down the officers of his squadron cut the dead flyer’s personal emblem off the wreck of his plane and sent it to his family, who kept it in a place of honour. Five year’s later, in 1923, a motor race was held near the hero’s old home at Ravenna, a race that was won by a young man who drove with such brilliance and daring that the spectators went wild with enthusiasm. Francesco Baracca’s father pushed his way through the crowd and led the dust-stained driver to his home where, with tears in his eyes, he presented him with a priceless trophy, the emblem from his dead son’s plane. The driver’s name was Enzo Ferrari, the long cherished emblem consisted of a yellow shield on which was painted a black, prancing horse. On that day in 1923 nobody could have realised just how formidable a combination Ferrari and the prancing horse would prove to be.

Enzo Ferrari was born in 1898 on the outskirts of Modena, in Italy’s Po Valley, the son of a metal worker who kept his small business going by making axles for railway coaches. Ferrari senior was the first man in Modena to own a motor car, and young Enzo was taken in it to see every motor race for miles around, with the result that during his schooldays he was more interested in cars and drivers than in the football teams that absorbed his friends.

From the first, Enzo Ferrari was lucky in his family. Most parents in the early 1900s would have been horrified at the thought of a son who wanted to devote himself not just to driving such noisy and dangerous vehicles as motor cars but actually wanted to race them. Ferrari’s father considered such an ambition perfectly reasonable, and even taught his son to drive at the remarkably early age of 13. As soon as he had finished with school, the elder Ferrari vowed, Enzo should go on to engineering college.

The outbreak of World War I upset the training of millions of young men, but Enzo Ferrari spent his service years fairly contented as an army mechanic. When peace came, he found himself a job as a test driver at a lorry factory. From there he moved to a motor cycle firm as a mechanic in the competition department and finally graduated to being a driver in his own right.

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This edited article about Malcolm and Donald Campbell originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 781 published on 1st January 1977.

Donald Campbell

The 14-year-old schoolboy who stepped off the liner Majestic in New York harbour after a six-day voyage from Southampton unquestionably regarded himself as the luckiest and most famous boy in the world.

As reporters crowded around him the boy smiled at them excitedly. “My Daddy will beat the world speed land record on the Salt Flats at Utah,” he declared. “And he will beat 300 miles an hour this time.”

“Daddy” was ace motor racing driver, Sir Malcolm Campbell, who already held the world record in his car “Bluebird” of 276.81 m.p.h. (444 km/hr). His proud son was Donald Campbell, a somewhat sickly lad who was not greatly admired by his father.

Indeed, it was most unusual for Sir Malcolm to show this much interest in his son, to have brought him to America for the world speed attempt. For the world in which Sir Malcolm moved, like some legendary colossus, had little time for children.

In the 1920s and 1930s, as young Donald grew up, Sir Malcolm had established himself as the idol of Britain. Nine times he broke world speed records on land and four times on water. Rich, successful and dominating, there was one idea that Sir Malcolm would not tolerate, and that was that his son should follow in his footsteps.

So Donald grew up in his father’s shadow, half fearing him, half envying him, but above all worshipping him. He wasn’t a bit surprised when Sir Malcolm did break the 300 m.p.h. (482 km/hr) barrier on the Salt Flats – just as he had said he would – on that trip to America in August, 1935. To Donald his father was all that a man could ever hope to be: strong, admired, respected and f√™ted wherever he went.

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This edited article about Rolls-Royce originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 770 published on 16th October 1975.

A Silver Ghost outside the Rolls-Royce showroom in Conduit Stret, London, c. 1915

Guests at Frederick Royce’s house in the South of France used to dread fine weather, because when the sun shone their host insisted on going down to the beach for a picnic. Once there, everyone was told to scour the area for driftwood in order to make a fire. It was useless for Royce’s brilliant engineers and fellow directors to suggest that it was far easier to make tea with the aid of a portable stove or even to take it ready made in a vacuum flask, for Royce had no time for such new fangled gadgets. Nothing, he claimed, was the equal of a really well made wood fire, and it was this instinctive distrust of anything new that the great engineer applied to his cars. The result may not always have been very exciting, but his search for total perfection was to produce a vehicle that would be accepted everywhere as “the best car in the world,” the immortal Rolls-Royce “Silver Ghost.”

The Ghost was by no means the first Rolls-Royce. Frederick Royce had made several cars on his own before he was persuaded to go into partnership with the wealthy enthusiast Charles Rolls and business man Claude Johnson. The company they formed produced 2 cylinder, 4 cylinder and 6 cylinder models, one of which Rolls drove to victory in the Isle of Man Tourist Trophy race of 1906. But it was an entirely new model that was exhibited at the London Motor Show in the autumn of that year. No racer, but a car so superbly made that it was to set a standard by which all other cars were to be judged for the next 20 years.

By today’s standards the 40/50 Rolls-Royce was not particularly powerful, for the 6 cylinder, 7 litre engine produced only 48 b.h.p., but even so it was enough to give the one and a half ton car a top speed of over 60 m.p.h. The magnificently finished engine was cast in two blocks of three cylinders, with side valves and a dual ignition system. Power was transmitted by a four speed gearbox, top being an overdrive, which accounted for the reasonable fuel consumption of 17 m.p.g. A finished car, complete with body, cost the firm about £600 to make, and it was offered to the public at about £1000.

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This edited article about speed record breakers originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 765 published on 11th September 1976.

Donald Campbell died in a tragic accident when Bluebird broke up during his attempt to break his own record

Screeching over the surface of Lake Guntersville, Alabama, Lee Taylor of America broke the world water speed record in June, 1967. In his jet-propelled hydroplane, Hustler, he soared through the surf at 285.213 mph (459.005 km/h) to gain the official title of the fastest man on water.

Taylor, then 33, made two one mile runs to gain the record, which was computed from his average speed on these runs.

Despite his success, Taylor failed to exceed the achievement of Britain’s Donald Campbell on 4th January, 1967.

In attempting to break his own record, Campbell drove his turbo-jet engined boat Bluebird at 328 mph (527.8 km/h).

But the laws of nature were against Campbell. His boat leapt into the air and broke up. Campbell died, a victim of man’s quest for speed.