Jonathan Wood has been writing and researching the history of the British motor industry all his working life. He has some 35 books to his credit, has twice won the Guild of Motoring Writers’ Montagu Trophy, and is a two-time recipient of the US-based Society of Automotive Historians’ Cugnot Award. A founder member of the staff of Classic Car magazine, he ran an MGA as his company car. Over the past 30 years he has given illustrated talks on motoring history to old car clubs and branches of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. In 2005 he presented the Institution’s Sir Henry Royce Memorial Lecture to mark the publication of his biography of Alec Issigonis, creator of the Morris Minor and Mini. Now living in Ludlow, Shropshire, he combines his automotive enthusiasms with writing and lecturing on local history. After a spell as art editor of Autocar, Lionel Burrell was the originator, in 1973, of Classic Car, which went on to become the world’s best-selling classic car magazine under the title Thoroughbred & Classic Cars. Later he became managing editor of the The Automobile magazine. He was instrumental, together with Roy Berry, in starting the first full-time diploma course in classic car restoration in the UK, at the Colchester Institute. His first car was an Austin Seven, which he bought in 1955. Since then he has owned and restored Jaguars, Aston Martins, Triumphs and MGs, including an MGB that was his first restoration project at the Colchester Institute. Currently, he still has his 3-litre Bentley, which he has owned for nearly 50 years, and he has just finished a two-and-a-half-year rebuild of a 1926 Talbot 10/23.
