Two Wheels To War
A Tale Of Twelve Bright Young Men Who Volunteered Their Own Motorcycles For The British Expeditionary Force 1914
Published on 12. June 2017
Book
Hardback
302 pages
978-1-911096-58-0 (ISBN)
Description
'Adventures of a despatch rider' originally published: William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh and London, 1915.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Solihull
United Kingdom
Edition type
Annotated edition
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
100 b/w photos, 8 maps
Dimensions
Height: 249 mm
Width: 175 mm
Thickness: 23 mm
Weight
916 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-911096-58-0 (9781911096580)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Martin Shelley, VMCC Blackburne and OEC Marque specialist, and Nick Shelley, secretary of the Marston Sunbeam Club & Register, are both vintage motorcycle enthusiasts and amateur historians of the early motor industry.
The Shelley brothers discovered the Burney brothers' photograph albums and medals in an auction, and quickly realized they featured in the classic Adventures of a Despatch Rider by W.H.L. Watson. Critically, the captions and names written on the backs of some pictures in the album helped them to identify the 12 despatch riders whose exploits Watson had written about.
They have used these striking pictures to illustrate the book, which also seeks to place Watson's thoughtful memoirs into a wider context through further detailed research. Over the course of six years they have found the despatch riders' families, unearthed unpublished material written by other members of the unit, read the war diaries and Watson's correspondence with his publisher, and visited France and Belgium, where they followed the tracks of the despatch riders from Mons to the Aisne, and then to Flanders.
The pictures and information they have uncovered are used here to enrich the original text, and to paint a fuller picture of the experiences of the early despatch riders in 1914 and beyond.
The Shelley brothers discovered the Burney brothers' photograph albums and medals in an auction, and quickly realized they featured in the classic Adventures of a Despatch Rider by W.H.L. Watson. Critically, the captions and names written on the backs of some pictures in the album helped them to identify the 12 despatch riders whose exploits Watson had written about.
They have used these striking pictures to illustrate the book, which also seeks to place Watson's thoughtful memoirs into a wider context through further detailed research. Over the course of six years they have found the despatch riders' families, unearthed unpublished material written by other members of the unit, read the war diaries and Watson's correspondence with his publisher, and visited France and Belgium, where they followed the tracks of the despatch riders from Mons to the Aisne, and then to Flanders.
The pictures and information they have uncovered are used here to enrich the original text, and to paint a fuller picture of the experiences of the early despatch riders in 1914 and beyond.