Speedway Books and Games
New speedway book: Shale Britannia.
By Admin
Jun 4, 2007, 18:08

Jeff Scott's candid digital photographs offer us an intriguing glimpse of speedway in the early 21st Century.

Scott has travelled to tracks around the country, standing on terraces with the fans and in the pits with the riders and mechanics, as he pursues an interest that borders on the obsessive. The 245 photographs here reveal but a small sample of the collection that chokes his computer.

Scott' pictures bear little relation to the images of sport photographers. He does not stalk his subjects with a telephoto lens, and does not search for the exotic or the unusual. The rather matter of fact, archival quality of his images lend his photographs an authentic appeal, more of the family photo album than the sports media' managed icons.

Through Scott' work, which inhabits the area of documentary, we can start to examine the working-class culture of this local community sport. From riders and start-line girls to mechanics and fans, he captures the personality and character of the tracks, as well as portraying the fans' elationships with their teams, and the relentless decline of British
regional identity.

Speedway tracks and their surrounds may lack the sort of crowds that the corporate media values, but they are nonetheless densely peopled with the ghosts of a proud history. With these images, Scott reveals with tender melancholy a community as it tries to recapture the glories of its heyday.

With his books Showered in Shale, When Eagles Dared and Shifting Shale, Jeff Scott' appreciation and wonder of this dangerous sport and his ability to describe and narrate the minutiae and entirety of the speedway experience deservedly won him plaudits far beyond the specialist media. This is his first book of photographs.

Signing tour dates:
7 June Swindon v. Wolverhampton
9 June Rye House v. Glasgow
10 June Sittingbourne v. Buxton
11 June Wolverhampton v. Reading
15 June Lakeside v. Eastbourne
16 June Eastbourne v. Peterborough
20 June King' Lynn v. Mildenhall
21 June Sheffield v. Birmingham
22 June Edinburgh v. Redcar
23 June Berwick 40th Anniversary meeting
24 June Glasgow v. Birmingham
25 June Belle Vue v. Eastbourne
27 June Poole v. Coventry
28 June Peterborough v. Eastbourne
29 June Somerset - PL Pairs Championship
30 June Cardiff - British GP
1 July Newport ­- Welsh Open
1 July Swindon v. Peterborough

Order info

£15.00 Paperback 256 pages

Buy at all good track shops, order via paypal on my website at www.methanolpress.com or send £18 cheque to cover P&P made payable to "J.Scott" at Methanol Press, 2 Tidy Street, Brighton BN1 4EL