In Pursuit Of Stardom, Tony Hewson (2006) Mousehold Press 1874739412 paperback 258pp £12.95 A joyous account of three Brits, an old ambulance and a lot of cycle races, that provides a dazzling insight in the Britain and France in the late 1950s

Hewson's story is a remarkable. A gifted road cyclist, he won the 1955 Tour of Britain, and a host of other domestic races. But thinking that a more challenging, rewarding racing life was to be had on the other side of the channel he set off with two friends, to live in converted army ambulance, and to test his talent on the continent.

They took with them little money, few contacts and a diy campervan conversion that should probably have never been allowed on the road.

So began an extraordinary, three-year, adventure. Hewson gained a professional contract, rode the Tour de France, finished a race in a breakaway with Fausto Coppi, and earned considerably more from his sporting endeavours than he could ever have done at the lowly civil service post that he gave up in pursuit of stardom.

The story itself is a Boys Own tale, but it is also beautifully written. Hewson mentions once or twice in his narrative that he kept careful notes of his every ride, and hints at having kept a diary. Clearly whatever records he did keep were sufficient to provide his tale with the embellishments that elevate it far above most sporting memoires.

He is particularly good on telling details - the food offered to riders before a race, or the precise qualities of sanitation in rural France at the end of the 1950s. 'Bathing only by arrangement with the establishment giving 24 hours notice' said a notice in one of the more salubrious apartments that the comrades shared, in Nice, for example. He is good too on financial details, providing precise breakdowns of their earnings in old francs, and an idea of how they compared with UK wages at the time. Hewson was in it for the adventure - but the cash clearly wasn't bad either.
Here he is, on a training ride close to the Cote d'Azzure, quite early in the French Odyssey.

"We sniffed the breeze. Rising up from the grand perfumeries of Grasse came potpourri of scents - jasmine, violets, rosemary, lavender - hinting at another world of languid luxury, a world I reckoned cycling stardom might one day open to us. Those aces, I reckoned, were triply honoured. They enjoyed the masculine physical outdoor life, the drama of sport and the cream of good things provided: smart clothes, fast cars and a ready supply of attractive star-struck girls"

The author, and his comrades Jock Andrews and Vic Sutton might have lived the dream, but their experiences were by no means all dreamy. Illness and crashes beset all three of them at one time or another, and although they clearly made life-long friends in France, they also came up against local combines who bent every rule to deny the foreigners. By 1960 Hewson decided that the life of a professional cyclist was no longer for him, so he returned to England to restart his working life - this time via higher education.

That he was able to write such a lyrical account of his extraordinary trail around criteriums and regional stage races 35 years after the fact is no small feat. By the end of the book, he has clearly earned the right to devote a chapter to the travails of Britain's cycling hierarchy. It is a discordant note on which to leave the story, however, not least because the 'miracle' in British road racing on the continent that Hewson discounts, has actually occurred.

That is a minor quibble, however, for the most part this is a book to be considered among the very finest sports writing ever produced.

PS Apr 10

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