Brooklands Museum, Weybridge, Surrey, 19 February 2026
The birthplace of British motorsport and aviation is the ideal location to talk about Whitney. The epitome of a wings and wheels man, he won races and broke lap records at Brooklands as a matter of routine.
The talk will be held in the Napier Room, and will also be streamed. Tickets to attend the talk in person, for Brooklands Museum members and non-members alike, and also for those who wish to livestream the evening, may be purchased here.
White Waltham is one of the UK’s oldest and best known airfields, and is home to the West London Aero Club. The aerodrome is forever associated with the Air Transport Auxiliary, with whom Whitney’s close friend, Diana Barnato Walker, served with distinction. My talk focused on Whitney’s childhood fascination with aircraft; qualifying as a pilot at just 17; his pre-war civil aviation business (the aerodromes, the airlines and the Miles Whitney Straight); his rise through the ranks from Pilot Officer to Air Commodore with 601 and 242 Squadrons, and 216 (Air Transport and Ferry) Group; and his his post-war career with BEA, BOAC and Rolls-Royce.
The hardback and Kindle versions of the book were published this morning. The occasion was marked with fizz and fillet steak chez nous, while The History Press published this thought-provoking Q&A we’d worked on recently. Read on…
My friends in the 
Our last night at the end of four weeks of North American book business and pleasure coincided with the the first stopover for the 73 Bugatti drivers participating in the 
Autobooks-Aerobooks,
In the summer of 2010, my family and I mixed business and pleasure on a four-week sojourn around North America, punctuated with book events. This was the first one, at the Rolls-Royce Owners’ Club’s Annual Meet. It was set up by Sabu Advani. At the time he was Editor-in-Chief of the RROC’s house magazine, The Flying Lady, and I recommend any petrol head to check in regularly with his 
My first overseas talk in support of The Man Who Supercharged Bond came about because of the one of the images on the front cover: the iconic 1962 image which Loomis Dean shot for Life magazine of Ian Fleming sitting in a Blower Bentley, the car supercharged by Amherst Villiers and famously driven by James Bond in the first three 007 novels.
The Bugatti Trust possesses a wealth of primary source material relating to Bugatti, and in David Morys it has a first-rate archivist. Its 
It was entirely appropriate that the first talk in support of The Man Who Supercharged Bond was at Beaulieu. Patrick Collins still runs the Research Library there, and Jon Day the Motoring Picture Library, and they’ve both been an enormous help to me down the years.