Definitive Jim Clark book now digital 21 | 12 | 2011

    IF YOU'RE THINKING of a last-minute gift for any motorsport fan, be they a Scot or not, then here's the perfect solution: the definitive book on Jim Clark — Jim Clark: A Tribute to a Champion — is now available as an ebook.

    Fellow Scot Eric Dymock’s biography of the two-times world champion driver is, quite correctly, acknowledged as the finest book ever written about the racer from Kilmany in Fife.

    On April 7, 1968, the day Clark was killed in a Formula 2 race at Hockenheim, a Los Angeles disc jockey urged drivers: “If you are mourning the death of the great racer Jim Clark, put on your headlights”. The whole freeway lit up at midday.

    More than 40 years later Clark’s reputation as the greatest natural driver in the history of motor racing remains just as bright.

    Dymock's highly regarded hardback was runner-up for the Guild of Motoring Writers’ Montagu Award and instrumental in gaining the author the Jim Clark Memorial Award for 2004.

    The book concentrates on the man rather than the cars he drove. Dymock knew Clark from his youth and provides a probing insight, a refreshing change from race-by-race car-by-car driver biographies.

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    “Not long after Jim died, I was approached to do a book, but at that time I could not," Dymock explained. "I needed to think about it. The accident at Hockenheim was a profound shock.

    "Walter Hayes head of Ford Public Affairs, like many of us, was at Brands Hatch at the BOAC 500. Sally Stokes, Jim's girlfriend, was in Holland. Jackie Stewart was in Spain.

    "When I was researching the book they could all remember the dismay, the sheer disbelief, of learning Jim Clark had died in a racing car: so unthinkable they had never really thought about it. None of us had.

    "We’ve watched later generations trying to cope with their calamities when Gilles Villeneuve died at Zolder, or Ayrton Senna at Imola. I couldn't write this book then.”

    While other books on the shy, nail-biting world champion covered his racing career, described his rise to stardom, and recalled his character, Dymock's book paints a portrait. It pins down the qualities that made Clark admired and respected to explain how, his modesty, his sportsmanship and his lustre are undimmed.

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    “I had to try and capture this shaft of light," Dymock continued. "I knew I could accomplish it because I was there throughout his career.

    "I had encouragement from Jim's sisters. I had encouragement from Jackie Stewart. Above all, I had encouragement from Ford Motor Company and from Walter Hayes.

    "He not only felt it was time to take a new look at Jim Clark: he felt it was time to sum up an era of motor racing on which he, Hayes, had had a big influence.”

    The book was praised as soon as it was printed, but Jim's girlfriend Sally Stokes perhaps put it best: “What a magnificent piece of writing. I know Jimmy would be touched by such a tribute.”

    To purchase "Jim Clark: A Tribute to a Champion" choose one of these options:

    ISBN 9780955490941            Jim Clark Kindle £6.99

    Download Kindle format from www.amazon.co.uk

    No Kindle? No problem. To read Kindle ebooks on your PC, Mac, ipad, android, iphone or ipodtouch, download the free Kindle app from Amazon.

    ISBN 9780955490958            Jim Clark Adobe Digital £10.99.

    For ebook in Adobe Digital Editions format, download from http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb or any other major online bookstore.

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    Jim McGill

     

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