New CN7 Book

[lsrdatabase]

Hi All,

I spoke to Donald about a week ago, he's going to email me when it's out.

Regards, Fred




'I'm just that bloke, who won't go away!'

[Renegadenemo]

I got a reply from Donald, his book is available from him or Amazon. Suggest anyone who wants a copy should mail him direct.

[email protected]

[bluebird-k7]

Donald Stevens has told me today that he's just picked up some copies of his new 'Bluebird CN7 - The Inside Story' book from his publishers Veloce Publishing.

The book is 128 pages long & hardback. There are over 100 photographs and diagrams, many not previously seen before in the public domain.

For people who don't know who Donald Stevens is, he was the Norris Brothers 1st employee and joined the company aged 19. and worked on the design of K7's cockpit & water baffles, but entered National Service before Donald achieved his 1st record at Ullswater.

When Donald completed his National Service, he returned to the Norris Brothers, and became the Project - Co-ordinator for the design & construction of Bluebird CN7. This is his 1st book.

For people who do know Donald - they'll know his talks at the Blue Bird Supporters Club open day events are always well received, and give his personal insight what it was like to work with Ken & Lew Norris, Donald Campbell & all the Norris Bros employees, who maybe don't get the recognition they deserve.

Where Can I Get This Book From??

This book is available directly from the author & costs £29 & also £5 to anywhere in the United Kingdom .

For this you get also get an exclusive DVD, which is not available elsewhere & has never been on public release before. It's a 30 minute, colour film DVD from the Owen Organisation 'Project Bluebird' which details the final runs. The DVD has a timeline on but does not interfere with the main picture.

This is a unique opportunity, to own a rare DVD, and a superb book. He will also sign it with any suitable inscription.

To contact Donald, his address is:- Brindles, Golford, Cranbrook, Kent, TN7 3PA, or email him at:- [email protected]

If you want to see a 12 minute interview with the author, and some of the footage on the DVD, go to:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQWNScJ_8LQ

Hope this is of interest

John Bullivant

[sheppane]

Donald Stevens has told me today that he's just picked up some copies of his new 'Bluebird CN7 - The Inside Story' book from his publishers Veloce Publishing.

The book is 128 pages long & hardback. There are over 100 photographs and diagrams, many not previously seen before in the public domain.

For people who don't know who Donald Stevens is, he was the Norris Brothers 1st employee and joined the company aged 19. and worked on the design of K7's cockpit & water baffles, but entered National Service before Donald achieved his 1st record at Ullswater.

When Donald completed his National Service, he returned to the Norris Brothers, and became the Project - Co-ordinator for the design & construction of Bluebird CN7. This is his 1st book.

For people who do know Donald - they'll know his talks at the Blue Bird Supporters Club open day events are always well received, and give his personal insight what it was like to work with Ken & Lew Norris, Donald Campbell & all the Norris Bros employees, who maybe don't get the recognition they deserve.

Where Can I Get This Book From??

This book is available directly from the author & costs £29 & also £5 to anywhere in the United Kingdom .

For this you get also get an exclusive DVD, which is not available elsewhere & has never been on public release before. It's a 30 minute, colour film DVD from the Owen Organisation 'Project Bluebird' which details the final runs. The DVD has a timeline on but does not interfere with the main picture.

This is a unique opportunity, to own a rare DVD, and a superb book. He will also sign it with any suitable inscription.

To contact Donald, his address is:- Brindles, Golford, Cranbrook, Kent, TN7 3PA, or email him at:- [email protected]

If you want to see a 12 minute interview with the author, and some of the footage on the DVD, go to:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQWNScJ_8LQ

Hope this is of interest

John Bullivant

My book arrived today. Looking at it now. First impressions are positive, although there is not as much coverage of the 64 attempt as one would wish. The book mainly concentrates on CN7/60, which Donald Stevens was the project co-ordinator for its build. It is heartbreaking to think that car became scrap after only 6 runs. Without the fin, with therefore with less drag, and given some slightly changed circumstances, both during the run up to Utah and the events in Utah themselves, the author makes a compelling case for CN7 to have set a record of 450 - 475 mph+ Things would have been very different subsequently if that had been the course of events.

The DVD of the 64 attempt is excellent and easily worth the additional expense.

Who did the proof read of the book though? I may be a perfectionist, but there are quite a few errors that should have been picked up, and the slightly missed opportunity to explain the 63 /64 attempts in more detail. The book is therefore a curates egg, albeit a good one...

Neil

[bluebird-k7]

Speaking to Donald Stevens today, he's a little surprised at people's wish for more on the Oz Runs. I would only have had to plagiarize John Peason's 'Bluebird and The Dead Lake' as there seems to be little info in the archives after BP pulled out.

Donald

[Renegadenemo]

Got a mail from Donald earlier to say his book has been voted book of the month by Octane magazine. He's a bit chuffed.

[sheppane]

Tell a lie, there's one other modern colour pic of the car in the book.

Interesting, the stuff in there alluding to companies not liking to work under Leo...or just sour grapes from the author after falling out with him? Plus there's at least one photo (cockpit, p.41) that's been printed in reverse, and another tiny one (p.113) that purports to be Ken Norris on the flooded Lake Eyre, but I'm pretty sure it's actually the older Ken with John Ackroyd during one of the Thrust 2 wash-outs?! Then we have Ken dying in October 2006 on one page and in 2005 on another, then a photo of Ken with the early Quicksilver model with some speculation that amounts to the author saying he doesn't know for sure what that was all about, while on the facing page it mentions Ken's work as a consultant on the early concept of Quicksilver!? Plus Maurie Parfit gets called 'Morry' and 'Morri' in the book also...

Yes... It's unfortunate... I wish a proof reader had been employed...

[quicksilver-wsr]

Having sold almost all of my motor-racing and speed-record books and memorabilia some years ago - as related in an earlier post - in order to raise funds for the Quicksilver project, I am not likely to be going out and spending money on this one.

However, a few words of sympathy for the author, whom I do not know from Adam, with respect to the proof-reading issue. Having been an author and publisher for the majority of my professional life, I know only too well of the perils of literals and other errors creeping in. It is essential to have a proof-reader, and ideally also an editor, to read through what is written very carefully indeed, and either make or suggest amendments.

But, even in these circumstances, errors can still slip through. Even when I was writing books for the world's largest publisher of transport titles, an American company, errors would sometimes creep in - despite the efforts of a proof-reader and an editor.

And it isn't always a comfortable case of having someone else to blame when a literal or other error made its way onto the printed page. Sometimes it would be my own fault, pure and simple, and there was nobody to blame but myself.

Of course, the bigger and glossier and more expensive the book, the worse the literals and other errors look.

Of my own books, the ones I tend to like the best, in retrospect, are the ones with the least errors!

As far as the other point I'd like to make, it concerns the matter of Ken Norris being referred to as a "consultant" on the Quicksilver project. This is, as I have said before on this forum, utter idiocy. To be fair to the author, though, he probably picked up duff gen from the same source, or sources, that the other duff gen on this subject emanated from. But instead of picking up duff gen, he should have picked up the telephone and asked me for the facts, instead of speculating aimlessly.

For the first two years or so of the project, there was no-one else involved but Ken and I, so who - or what - was Ken "consulting" to? Was he, perhaps, consulting to me? If so, to do what exactly? I was not then, and am not to this day, either a boat designer or an aerodynamicist or even an engineer, so who was the boat's designer? My cat, perchance? Or could it have been my gardener, possibly? Or perhaps it was the lady across the road.

I repeat, for the sake of the historical record, that the Quicksilver project came about when I learned that Ken Norris had an idea for a new boat, so I joined forces with him in November 1988 to produce it. It was Ken's concept - the "flying-wing boat," as I call it - that we got together to produce, and as I have stated before, it sadly didn't work as advertised and we dropped it and moved on to other ideas he had for boat designs.

As early as 1991, Ken and I formed Quicksilver (WSR) Ltd. as joint 50-50 shareholders.

And Ken remained a major shareholder, jointly with me, until the day he died - some 14 years later, in 2005.

Funny consultancy.

[Pullman99]

I was visiting the National Motor Museum last Friday to have a look around for the first time in a quite a few months and was amazed that neither in the shop, nor anywhere near the car itself, was there any mention of the new CN7 book let alone the facility to purchase it (unless I missed it which I don't think I did). A publisher's opportunity missed, I think.

I am going to order a copy of the CN7 book from Donald Stevens directly. I met him back in 1980 and arranged for him to come to the NMM to "crawl" over the car one day. More golden opportunities for enhanced promotion missed methinks.

[Renegadenemo]

Apparently the car's suspension struts have been replaced with solid bars, because of H&S regulations re. the gas struts?!

That'll be right. Maybe I should copy some pages from the Bristol Siddeley book about the dozen dangerous substances used in the engine build. That'd baffle them, trying to get that lot out of there.