Phil Llewellin on "The Road to Muckle Flugga"? (from TypePad)

The Road to Muckle Flugga is collection of articles about “Great drives on Five Continents” by the late Phil Llewellin. He was a wonderful writer, who happened to write about motoring, for CAR Magazine (U.K.) among others.

His articles were captivating as they conveyed his impressions of the country & characters he met as much as the vehicle he happened to be travelling in. This collection spans several decades so some of the, now irrelevant, technical/marketing detail has been removed. This lets the stories, people and places, which Phil conveys beautifully, shine even brighter.

I read it on the plane home from Orlando, back in  February , and it’s ideal travel companion. Each story is self contained, snack sized but very tasty, so you can dip in & out without the effort of remembering a plot. During a 30 hour flight/transit that’s a good thing!

Having just left there one article about his travels in Florida, collecting exotic cars with a truck driver who transports them across the United States, had me laughing;

 “...we cruised into Florida, a state with all the scenic grandeur of a snooker table. Either swamp, forest or holiday resort, it makes you think the flat earth society could be right.”

After serving him deep fried alligator and chips at Vero Beach the waitress, who’d never eaten it, asked what it was like;

“Very similar to crocodile,” I said keeping a perfectly straight face, “but with a faint hint of aardvark” 

Most are funny, some are sad, some just bizarre (high jinks in the Sahara & crossing war torn Afghanistan), but all are interesting. His travels include USA, Canada, Africa, British Isles, Middle East, Caribbean, South America, Asia and Europe but sadly not Australia or New Zealand (Did he ever get here?). In one chapter he travels to China with:

“…a convivial colleague, a young motoring reporter from Yorkshire who was looking forward to being screen-tested for a BBC TV’s Top Gear motoring show when he got home…”

Phil showed the young Jeremy Clarkson how to combine expert drinking and writing;

Quotes from the Foreword  –  by Jeremy Clarkson
“There is only one cure for a hangover, he [Phil] said. “We need to get drunk again”. This was Phil’s solution to pretty well everything.
The astonishing thing is though I came back from China not really knowing where I’d been or what had happened there, whereas he came back and wrote a piece that was crammed full of detail and fact. You see this in everything he does”

“I love his ability to find something interesting in almost everything and, when he can’t, to spice up the banal with his own take on things. I also love the fact that he’s a font of knowledge, especially on military history and the Welsh. Most of all though, I love the way he’s just so damn funny. As a result so is this book”

I think the finest piece is, the appropriately named, “Their Finest Hour”. I clipped this out of CAR when first published in 1990 as I loved it then.

To mark the 50th Anniversary of the Battle of Britain Phil went on a personal pilgrimage to major landmarks connected with “The greatest aerial campaign in history”. He drove a Red Bentley Mulsanne Turbo which is reviewed along with the history of the places he visits, the events, people and machines. This is far from a dry historical tale as he recounts the experiences of the air-crew, families and children involved.

It’s a pity is only some of the photos from the article, which featured both modern & historical photo’s and lovely watercolour illustrations, made it to the book. That aside it’s a must read in a book of great reads.

If anything the book format is the only weakness. It’s a pity this wasn’t a magazine format book reproducing the articles, with the photos and layout, as first published. Still, that doesn’t affect the quality of the writing and I highly recommend it.

Phil Llewellin: The Road to Muckle Flugga: Great Drives in Five Continents @ Amazon.com

Guardian Unlimited | Obituaries | Phil Llewellin
“Phil Llewellin, who has died of a heart attack, aged 64, was one of the best motoring writers, if not the best, of the past four decades…”

PS: If you are wondering, Muckle Flugga is a real place at the end of a real road!

Note: First posted on my TypePad blog in 2006 

The Road to Muckle Flugga is collection of articles about “Great drives on Five Continents” by the late Phil Llewellin. He was a wonderful writer, who happened to write about motoring, for CAR Magazine (U.K.) among others.

His articles were captivating as they conveyed his impressions of the country & characters he met as much as the vehicle he happened to be travelling in. This collection spans several decades so some of the, now irrelevant, technical/marketing detail has been removed. This lets the stories, people and places, which Phil conveys beautifully, shine even brighter.

I read it on the plane home from Orlando, back in  February , and it’s ideal travel companion. Each story is self contained, snack sized but very tasty, so you can dip in & out without the effort of remembering a plot. During a 30 hour flight/transit that’s a good thing!

Having just left there one article about his travels in Florida, collecting exotic cars with a truck driver who transports them across the United States, had me laughing;

 “...we cruised into Florida, a state with all the scenic grandeur of a snooker table. Either swamp, forest or holiday resort, it makes you think the flat earth society could be right.”

After serving him deep fried alligator and chips at Vero Beach the waitress, who’d never eaten it, asked what it was like;

“Very similar to crocodile,” I said keeping a perfectly straight face, “but with a faint hint of aardvark” 

Most are funny, some are sad, some just bizarre (high jinks in the Sahara & crossing war torn Afghanistan), but all are interesting. His travels include USA, Canada, Africa, British Isles, Middle East, Caribbean, South America, Asia and Europe but sadly not Australia or New Zealand (Did he ever get here?). In one chapter he travels to China with:

“…a convivial colleague, a young motoring reporter from Yorkshire who was looking forward to being screen-tested for a BBC TV’s Top Gear motoring show when he got home…”

Phil showed the young Jeremy Clarkson how to combine expert drinking and writing;

Quotes from the Foreword  –  by Jeremy Clarkson
“There is only one cure for a hangover, he [Phil] said. “We need to get drunk again”. This was Phil’s solution to pretty well everything.
The astonishing thing is though I came back from China not really knowing where I’d been or what had happened there, whereas he came back and wrote a piece that was crammed full of detail and fact. You see this in everything he does”

“I love his ability to find something interesting in almost everything and, when he can’t, to spice up the banal with his own take on things. I also love the fact that he’s a font of knowledge, especially on military history and the Welsh. Most of all though, I love the way he’s just so damn funny. As a result so is this book”

I think the finest piece is, the appropriately named, “Their Finest Hour”. I clipped this out of CAR when first published in 1990 as I loved it then.

To mark the 50th Anniversary of the Battle of Britain Phil went on a personal pilgrimage to major landmarks connected with “The greatest aerial campaign in history”. He drove a Red Bentley Mulsanne Turbo which is reviewed along with the history of the places he visits, the events, people and machines. This is far from a dry historical tale as he recounts the experiences of the air-crew, families and children involved.

It’s a pity is only some of the photos from the article, which featured both modern & historical photo’s and lovely watercolour illustrations, made it to the book. That aside it’s a must read in a book of great reads.

If anything the book format is the only weakness. It’s a pity this wasn’t a magazine format book reproducing the articles, with the photos and layout, as first published. Still, that doesn’t affect the quality of the writing and I highly recommend it.

Phil Llewellin: The Road to Muckle Flugga: Great Drives in Five Continents @ Amazon.com

Guardian Unlimited | Obituaries | Phil Llewellin
“Phil Llewellin, who has died of a heart attack, aged 64, was one of the best motoring writers, if not the best, of the past four decades…”

PS: If you are wondering, Muckle Flugga is a real place at the end of a real road!

Comments

[Jack Yan]

I miss these guys: Setright, Llewellin, Bishop, Bulgin.

[RobiNZ]

Me too, not saying I really understood all they wrote* - the technical, musical and literary references - but their writing made me want to learn.

Funny thing is, too many years on than I care to remember, Stephen Fry is having the same impact in 140 character bursts thanks to Twitter. Twice today he had me Googling to learn about words I'd never seen before!

* I was about 12 when I first read Setright etc in Car

[blackmanos]

[this is good]

[Jack Yan]

Robin, you might want to delete Blackmanos above—as far as I can tell, it’s a comment-spammer going around Vox to send links back to its site (which has links to pirate software).

[blackmanos]

Why did you decide that I am a spammer? I do not post links in comments on some sites? If I liked that I can not leave
[this is good]
?

[Jack Yan]

Because, Blackmanos, you’ve left the ‘This is good’ on around 600 blog posts in the last 24 hours, where there appears to be no relation. Your actions are totally in line with many other people who have been here on Vox that were found to be spammers. I find it hard to believe you would have been to dozens of posts in 24 hours and not commented on a thing till now. You have two posts on your site that advertise the same thing.
   It’s Robin’s choice whether he deletes you, and it’s Vox’s choice whether they delete your account. But in my book, you fit the profile. I apologize if I got it wrong, but unless you tell me how you can comment ‘This is good’ on 600 blog posts in a day, I’m going to stick to my conclusion.

[blackmanos]

Sorry if I offended you [this is good], like how best to get as ever. Yes in my blog does not have a lot of messages, but it still does not mean anything. I do not think that is forbidden to leave a message at least 1 at least 10 at least 100 at least 1000. Of course everyone likes to solve this is to him or not you are deleted and it's your right.

[Jack Yan]

The mystery remains how you managed to do this for literally hundreds of blog posts in a day.
   It’s quite easy to go to any search engine to find there are 600 entries from you with ‘This is good’, made in roughly a 24-hour period. That’s 25 an hour, assuming you didn’t sleep or eat. Now, we can conclude you did sleep and eat, which meant you probably had around 10 hours in front of the computer. That means you read and commented on one post every minute. It sounds pretty improbable to me, and I’d love to know how you did it.

[blackmanos]

the mystery remains a mystery ...

[Jack Yan]

In that case, I’m going to have to stick with my deduction that you are a comment-spammer as what you have done is humanly impossible. I think I have been generous in giving you the opportunity to explain yourself, and Robin has been generous in not deleting our discussion—yet. You even hit some of the splogs with your “commenting”, which is really funny.

[RobiNZ]

Sorry Jack, took me a while to get here I but find your conversation with blackmanos (now "Gone") interesting in a Turing test way. Was it a real human spammer or a clever "bot" responding to your queries? Anyway seems the Vox God's have dealt with it globaly

[Jack Yan]

That’s OK: as you can see, I had a nice time with a bit of light typed sparring. It was probably a real person running a bot, so the 600-plus comments were the bot, and the above was his trying to defend himself when he realized he was busted.