Well this is most gratifying. Next month I shall be returning to the Royal Automobile Club on Pall Mall, where I carried out so much of the research, and where the book was launched.
The Club’s Motoring Book of the Year awards are being held there on 28 October, and my Whitney Straight book has been shortlisted in the ‘motorsport title under £30’ category.
Sixteen years and a whole head of curly hair after I last did a signing there, and maybe fourteen after I began my Whitney Straight project, I returned to Autobooks-Aerobooks, the bookshop with the most ideal customer base on the planet, a chequered flag for a floor and another one draped over the signing table. No better place in which to bid farewell to Whitney.
The Century Association, on New York’s West 43rd Street, is a private club founded in 1847. Whitney’s father Willard was once a member, and the family kindly arranged for it to be the base for a celebration of the book’s US launch.
Back on Ben Horton’s stand as an author rather than as a punter for the first time in years, signing a few copies of the Whitney book, and chatting about it for his excellent YouTube channel.
As the home of British motorsport and aviation, there was no better place than Brooklands Museum to celebrate the life of Whitney Straight, and so many people contributed to a very special day.
The book was published on 2 October 2025, and had its first reprint in December, just in time for Christmas.
Outside on the streets of New York, horseless carriages were vying for supremacy over horse-drawn buggies. Inside the five-storey townhouse on East 67th Street, near the corner with Madison Avenue, Dr Cragin’s attempts to induce the baby had failed. It was clear now that the expectant parents would not get their wish – their first child would not be born on election day.
Thanks to Adam on sound and a mighty projector, the Dartington Trust‘s Arts Curator Peter Nicholson and I were able to create a convivial atmosphere in the Great Hall as we chatted about Whitney, and how his unique position as Dartington’s eldest founding pupil helped form him
The Royal Automobile Club’s Pall Mall clubhouse library was the perfect location for the book launch. I spent many weeks there, maybe even months, poring over books and 1930s magazines, and that lovely long room, lined with oak book shelves and with open fires at each end, is quite literally my favourite room in London.
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…