If Woolletts book is the best on Norton history, this is the other side of the scale.

Fortunately for most English-speaking Norton enthusiasts, this "work" is written in German. If, for masochistic reasons, you want the most boring accounts of long-gone races ("and in the 173rd lap, the chain broke, so Max Schlickenheimer did not finish"), or if you have a sick desire to buy a book in which most pictures have the quality of bad photocopies and are wrongly captioned to boot, this is what you want for Christmas.

Author Christian Spahn is neither known for his knowledge of motorcycles in general, nor for his love of Nortons in particular. When my friend Stephan Knittel, who has one of the best Norton archives on the globe, offered Spahn his help, Spahn replied he did not need it- he had all the material he wanted.

My only explanation for this sorry accumulation of non-facts and fiction is that some German publisher wanted a book on a famous marque without spending money on an author, so the first person that stumbled into his office, trying to sell him a cookery book, was condemned to write this drivel.

If somebody gives you this as a present, and knows about Nortons, he has at best a very sick sense of humour.