Nicholas Foulkes. Published 2006. 192 Pages. "The Bentley Era" celebrates a unique moment in motor-sport, a short period between the wars that was populated with devil-may-care characters who lived their lives as fast off the racetrack as they drove their Bentleys around the famed courses of Brooklands and Le Mans. For a few fast and colourful years during the twenties, the Bentley Boys carried all before them both on and off the racetrack. They, more than any other group of rich young men, embodied the carefree, spendthrift, thrillseeking, sybaritic spirit of the Roaring Twenties. Lavishly illustrated with over 100 fascinating archive shots and filled with numerous facts and anecdotes, the book completely captures the glamour of the age when the legend of the Bentley Boys was born. To set the story in its social and motoring context, the book begins with an introduction to the life and engineering ingenuity of the fabled W. O. Bentley before focusing on the on-and off-racetrack careers of some of the most famous Bentley Boys. The final chapter follows what happened to the Bentley Boys after their golden age was over and the subsequent history of Bentley Motors.
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