Many people have wondered over the years how we can have a professionally edited 56-page magazine and a staff of 10 organising a wide variety of events, designing, building and maintaining the website, insurance valuations, technical advice, handling all the necessary admin, supporting our wonderful Representatives and everything else we do when we are such a relatively small, very focussed club. I wonder myself sometimes!
The answer, of course, is that most of our staff also work for the publishing side and this enables us to operate the XK and E-type clubs as we do. This is therefore my justification for unashamedly giving our books a good plug with Christmas fast approaching. If you (or your partner, who is of course reading this as well!) need inspiration for presents, please look no further. We have a very full range of books – all sorts of subjects, including Jaguar of course, and at a variety of prices, from modest to… less modest.

There is one book I particularly want to push very hard, as it is new and supporting the Hope for Tomorrow cancer charity. Drivers on Drivers is, as the name implies, drivers talking about other drivers. And drivers interviewed include seven Formula One World Champions, World Sports Car Champions, and a rally legend. We have Tony Brooks on Stirling Moss, Jackie Stewart on Jim Clark, Gerhard Berger on Ayrton Senna, Mark Webber on Sebastian Vettel, Damon Hill on Michael Schumacher – 31 greats talking about their rivals, teammates and friends.

The books are only £30 and if you buy direct from the club, using your club
discount code, around £10 goes to charity (buy elsewhere and as little as £2 goes to charity). The ideal present for friends and relatives, and yourself!

From the archives
Philip Porter talks to Bob Knight, chassis designer of the XK 120, in an interview first published in 1998

Before his death in 2000, Bob Knight was the last survivor of the original team that contributed to the design of the XK 120. William Lyons, Bill Heynes, Walter Hassan and Claude Baily were sadly no longer with us by the time that Philip Porter interviewed Knight for an article in issue 10 of the XK Gazette.

Knight joined Jaguar in December 1944 after gaining a degree in mechanical engineering at Birmingham University, and spells at Armstrong Siddeley and Standard (on Bristol Hercules engines). He was no stranger to SS and Jaguar, for his father was Director and General Manager of SH Newsome’s in Coventry: ‘In 1945-’46 we were doing experimental chassis of one sort and another. Lyons started to string together a body which was a mixture of pre- and post-war designs. He then put together an...