Always In the Picture
ALWAYS IN THE PICTURE
BOOK REVIEW
by Bob Burgess & Jeff Clew Haynes Publishing Co. 861 Lawrence Drive Newbury Park, Calif. 91320 $14.95 plus $1.50 handling
For quite some time now Jeff Clew and Bob Burgess' definitive history of the Velocette has been unobtainable, partially at least because the rather small and typically English publishing company that originally printed it couldn't quite justify another run. However in the face of constant demand, Jeff prevailed upon Haynes to take over the job and also seized the opportunity to make a few corrections plus adding a sort of picture album at the back, mostly of the Velocette “family” but also showing some valuable photos of earlier models.
Velocette is very much a family, one even more close-knit than Norton people as the works didn’t wander off into vertical twins and the like, but the book shows that even through the production of classic ohc Singles that made their name, the Velocette directors had this ineffable yen to produce the perfect People’s bike. So they did: if it hadn’t been dead gutless riddled
with teething troubles, and introduced at the wrong time for a terribly conservative market. At any rate, the meat of the book is a well-written (wot else from Jeff Clew?) history of Velos that not only dots the i’s and crosses the t’s historically but also dwells on racing successes and shop stories. Not the least important section is a long one of their famous ohc engines, the first ones to work properly in bikes I think, which not only details development at the slow pace that these backstreet English “factories” adopted (so different from today!) but also includes priceless information from vanished shop manuals on how to set up the camshaft engines, should you be so lucky as to have one.
The dreaded Jeff was out here just recently and allowed that the print order on this book wasn’t going to be all that large either. Better pick one up; if you like English bikes Always in the Picture should be in your library.
Henry N. Manney III
