The Times, Lives Remembered:
October 15, 2005
Jock Gardner writes: My regret at the passing of L. J. K. Setright was offset by an excellent obituary (October 6). One of his greatest books was the magisterial The Grand Prix Car, 1954-1966 (1968), in which he combined sound technical analysis and perception with clear English completed by a very Setrightian style.
Turan Ahmed writes: In the automotive world, where the creator often despises the critic, the words of L. J. K. Setright brought new illumination ? illumination intended to nurture the creative process.
This period of economic lull has produced reactionary corporate conservatism, yet today?s vehicle strategy and design culture needs fresh perspectives, analysis and solutions. A parallel period 50 years ago, during the Suez crisis, generated novel thought and gave us the original Mini. Where?s its true spiritual successor today? LJKS?s words are more valuable today than ever ? a true legacy and compendium that should be revisited and reconsidered.
The Times, Obituaries:
October 8, 2005
Jock Gardner writes: One of the greatest books by L. J. K. Setright (obituary, October 6) was his magisterial The Grand Prix Car, 1954-1966, in which he combined sound technical analysis and perception with clear English completed by a very Setrightian style.
Particularly noteworthy was his witty and literate caption for an excellent action shot of the late Jim Clark in the environment in which he was most at home, behind the wheel of a Lotus Grand Prix car.
Setright wrote: ?There are few more impressive sights in the world, wrote Sir James Barrie, than a Scotsman on the make.? Very memorable.
The Times, October 6th 2005:
L. J. K. Setright August 10, 1931 - September 7, 2005
Motoring journalist whose acerbic writings enthralled aficionados and outraged environmentalists
The motoring journalist L. J. K. Setright looked at cars with the eye of an engineer, not an enthusiast. Disliking ostentation and silliness, he sought to elevate his readers? appreciation of the motor vehicle. If, as some suggested, Setright was the first motoring journalist to be unapologetically trenchant, reactionary and environmentally irresponsible, this was incidental to his uncompromising intellect, vast knowledge and linguistic agility.
Moreover, Setright, a smoker of Sobranie Black Russian cigarettes who could have understudied for Christopher Lee during his stint as Saruman in Lord of the Rings, was an unashamed elitist. He wrote prose for the thinking motorist, and believed that if the masses could not understand his writing ? just as they had not understood that the Citroën DS was the future of motoring or that assisted steering was inherently, almost morally, wrong ? then that was no concern of his.
Leonard John Kensell Setright was born in London in 1931, the son of Australian immigrants. His father, who died when Setright was 11, was an engineer whose creations included the bus conductor?s ticket dispenser. Although engineering fascinated Setright, he chose instead to study law at London University, only to find that he hated it as a profession.
After National Service in the RAF and a stint as an air traffic controller, Setright turned instead to writing on the engineering magazine Machine Age. He became editor after 14 months, but then moved to the maverick motorist?s publication, Car.
His reputation grew as Car?s circulation steadily increased. He wrote about the latest models with regular dips into Classical philosophy. His views were forthright and provocative, but always well argued. Driving, he believed, was a simple pleasure and he wrote without a shred of the machismo.
Setright never saw a car as something that should attract attention: at the 2004 European Car of the Year awards, he singled out the unassuming Fiat Panda. ?The linearity of the major controls is wonderful, such that none of these others should be here at all,? he said. Sure enough, the Panda won.
He took driving seriously, and wore black leather gloves at the wheel. As well as his beloved Bristol, Setright drove a Honda Prelude ? one of few cars, he liked to explain, where the engineers had been allowed to get the steering right. During the 30 years in which he wrote for Car, Setright became increasingly annoyed by marketing men, advertisers and the masses who demanded electronic gadgetry: all, Setright believed, were diluting the engineer?s vision. He was a devotee of all-wheel steering and lamented that it had never caught on.
A private man, Setright never answered his fans? letters. ?It cannot be too widely known,? he once wrote, ?that Setright does not indulge in correspondence.? Interviewers who got in a car with Setright were likely to be scared witless; he believed that speed limits were a nefarious and pointless tool of state repression. Perverting the popular dictum, he wrote: ?The rabble-rousing rant of the politicians is not to be trusted. Speed does not kill. Speed saves. It saves life by saving time, which amounts to the same thing.? Bus lanes, he argued, robbed us all of life.
Despite his penchant for speed, Setright rarely got into trouble on the road. The one serious accident of his life, sustained on a motorcycle, was not his fault.
The lucidity of Setright?s writing kept him just the credible side of crankishness. On green concerns, he took the position most infuriating to environmentalists: that it is arrogant for Man to believe he can substantially alter the world for better or worse. Overall, he believed that, as the single most civilising invention in man?s arsenal, the car had to be accommodated, and that any legislation that hampered the motorist?s passage from A to B in the shortest possible time was certain to bring misery, unforeseen complications and a poorer quality of life.
His writing was not for everyone. The opening paragraph of his best-known book, Drive On! begins: ?The sources of invention and the tributaries of discovery seldom flow directly or rapidly towards those reservoirs of employment wherein pragmatic men acknowledge the genius of their prognostic mentors?, causing one critic to accuse him of creating ?verbal suet puddings?.
After leaving Car in 1999, Setright took a slot on Radio 4. In his later, occasional columns for The Independent, Setright?s writing ? once gloriously contrary ? had become more predictably anachronistic: he still benchmarked everything against Bristols and Preludes; electric or hybrid cars were dismissed in short order and in March this year he lambasted BMW for agreeing to create cars without ashtrays.
Yet Setright never failed to entertain, and wrote or collaborated on more than a dozen books that used his wry, investigative humour to explain engines, motor racing, motorcycles and the history of his favourite marques. He also wrote for specialist hi-fi magazines, and was a skilled clarinettist, a choral singer and a scholar of Judaism.
He is survived by his wife, Helen, and by two daughters of his first marriage. L. J. K. Setright, motoring journalist, was born on August 10, 1931. He died on September 7, 2005, aged 74.
From The Telegraph:
LJK Setright
(Filed: 17/09/2005)
LJK Setright, who died on September 7 aged 74, was Britain's best-known and most eloquent motoring journalist and author, famous in an era before car experts could win easy notoriety on TV; he was "discovered" by a loyal readership within a year or two of taking up writing as a career in the mid-1960s, and maintained his reputation for erudition, mixed with an air of mystery, until he died.
Setright's fame stemmed primarily from his deep love for automobiles and engineering, about which he wrote most consistently and for longest in the monthly magazine Car. He was mostly self-taught on engineering subjects, but his erudition allowed him to meet the motor industry's best engineers on equal terms. It also enabled him to explain complicated concepts to his readers with a rare clarity. The same insights gave him the confidence to be a trenchant commentator who loved voicing provocative (but always elaborately argued) opinions - though nothing he ever wrote put his innate love for cars, motorcycles and their engineering in the slightest doubt.
Most of all, Setright was well-known for his lyrical, ornate and sometimes high-flown writing style, which bore no similarity to anything else written on such subjects. Readers loved or hated Setright's writing, but were rarely unmoved by it. Publishers became used to the fact that it was he who generated the most correspondence. Setright's editors generally loved his contributions, which were always delivered free of any kind of blemish, and written exactly to length. Much of the time, he even wrote copy in the measure of the publication for which it was intended, so that it arrived line-perfect as well.
Though fearless about voicing his frequently controversial opinions, at the core Setright was a private man who rarely volunteered much detail about his own life and activities. And although he greatly enjoyed communicating with readers en masse, he offered no one the slightest hope of individual contact. "It cannot be too widely known," he used to say, "that Setright does not indulge in correspondence." He was pleased to know that his opinions would be discussed, but was content that the discussion should proceed without him.
Leonard John Kensell Setright (friends called him Leonard, but he was always 'LJKS' in print) was born in London on August 10 1931, to Australian parents who had settled there. His father was an inventor and engineer, who eventually founded a family light engineering business that produced, among other things, the Setright ticket dispensing machine, famously used by British bus conductors until well into the 1970s.
Leonard went to grammar school at Palmer's Green, but lost his father at 11, perhaps one reason why he did not train in engineering, but read Law at London University instead.
He enjoyed his studies but hated practising law; so, after doing his national service in the RAF (when poor eyesight prevented his becoming a pilot, he became an air traffic controller instead), Setright turned to writing for a living. His first articles were on general engineering subjects and he was instantly successful, but his national notoriety began when he became a star writer at Car in the mid-1960s, and it never waned. Those who worked with Setright became used to answering the same question from readers: "What's LJK Setright really like?"
Setright's interests ranged far wider than automotive subjects and engineering. Having studied music as a child, he became expert on the clarinet as a band member in the RAF, and played it all his life. Fellow journalists remember him producing his instrument at the launch of a BMW model in France in the 1970s, and striking up with a jazz band. He was a fine singer, and a founder member of the Philharmonia Chorus (one treasured memory was a performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony, under Otto Klemperer).
He was a dedicated student of the Jewish religion, which he followed all his life. His wide residual knowledge of everything that moved - aeroplanes, locomotives, motorcycles - was used to produce several dozen books, all on technical subjects but packed with intriguing narrative and challenging opinion.
Those who knew Setright well enjoyed his eccentricities, such as his life-long love of Bristol cars, a rare and idiosyncratic marque which has its roots in the long-defunct British aircraft industry. He detested speed limits and drove notoriously fast, frightening his passengers, but seldom had accidents. He hated diesel trucks and cars, not least for the "filth" they dropped on the roads, endangering motorcyclists, and he also disliked environmental fads.
He enjoyed dressing well, and had a particular penchant for being photographed for some new column or feature. He was vocal on the advantages of old age and shamelessly enjoyed smoking, always Sobranie Black Russian cigarettes, taking a fatalistic stance about any effect they might have on his health.
He particularly loved the high engineering values of Honda, and drove a venerable Prelude Coupe until he died. He liked most motorcycles, too, going about on a large, six-cylinder Honda until severely injured in an accident (which was not his fault).
He peppered his writing with classical allusions, or quotations in Latin or Greek. He once wrote in blank verse about a Citroen. And when, quite recently, the editor of one of Britain's best-known magazines suggested he "tone down" these flights of fancy to suit a more modern audience, his response was to submit a column entirely in Latin (before offering a translation a day later). Blessed with a brilliant memory, Setright never needed to take notes.
LJK Setright's first marriage, which ended in the mid-1970s, produced two daughters. He is survived by his children and by Helen, his second wife, whom he married late in life.
True aficionados should go here: tinyurl.com/8a456
|
