On Wheels

By Michael Holroyd

From the bestselling author of A Book of Secrets, a brisk, charming, illustrated account of a motoring life

As a child, Michael Holroyd spent his best hours in his family's cramped garage, which contained a wealth of magical, exciting objects. But the most intriguing by far was the one in the middle of the room—the family's eight-horsepower black Ford, which had found in the garage a permanent home and in Holroyd a dedicated caretaker. Sitting in the backseat—his own private castle—he began his love affair with the automobile.
On Wheels is the story of the cars and drivers that inspired and affected Holroyd throughout his life. Ranging from drives around the country with his father, a car obsessive, to the baroque horrors of his austere driving instructor, to the liberating pleasures of automatic transmission, On Wheels is an automotive autobiography—the story of times and places that mattered to the author, told through the cars that bore witness.
"My biographies," Holroyd writes, "became increasingly filled with motoring exploits—something of which I was unaware until recently," and so On Wheels is also a reflection on the author's many brilliant biographical subjects—Bernard Shaw, Lytton Strachey, and many others—and their own relationships to the open road.
Casually intimate and often riotously funny, On Wheels is a master biographer's miniature self-portrait—and an indelible reflection on his great passion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: May 14, 2013
• ISBN: 9780374709891

Michael Holroyd

Besides the biographies of Augustus John, Bernard Shaw and Lytton Strachey, Michael Holroyd has written two volumes of memoirs, Basil Street Blues and Mosaic. He was president of the Royal Society of Literature from 2003 - 2008 and is the only non-fiction writer to have been awarded the British Literature Prize. He lives in London and Somerset with his wife, the novelist Margaret Drabble.