The Condor Years – a panorama of British cycling, 1945 – 2000

Peter Whitfield. Wychwood, 2005. 236 pages paperback, £15 or £17.50 post paid. ISBN 0-95114838-9-7. Available from Condor Cycles, 51 Gray's Inn Road, London WC1.

For about 25 years , from 1965 to 1990, I had one book on the Tour de France. Now I have around 30. So much for marketing, and the dominance of one race. British riders figure in these and other histories (the Penguin Book of the Bicycle ), and Chas Messenger has written at least three books on specific events in British cycling. But up until now there's been no single book on the history of cycle sport – road, time-trialling, track, cyclo-cross – in the UK during the very important 55 years from 1945 to 2000, a well-documented period during which cycling in Britain changed radically, from something which (owing largely to wartime petrol rationing) absolutely everyone did, to a dying activity, on roads crammed with 22 million motor vehicles.

So Peter Whitfield's excellent history fills a vacancy on the shelf. This is a very good book indeed. It's thoroughly researched, as detailed as anyone could wish, written by someone who can write, lavishly illustrated (over 200 photos), and beautifully printed and handsomely produced. It's a private publication, sponsored by Condor Cycles, and contains within its wider context a history of the famous firm.

Thanks to Percy Stallard and the BLRC, road racing was already possible by 1946, and the next 15 years, it's now apparent, were a Golden Age for cycling in Britain. There was little traffic and a huge base of commuter cyclists who knew exactly how hard it must be to ride at 25 mph. There were thousands of clubs, and runs of 60 or more riders were the norm. Pictures show tracks – Fallowfield, Herne Hill, Halesowen – crammed to capacity, thousands of spectators lining the roads at road-race finishes in the suburbs. It's difficult to imagine anyone even contemplating making a film like A Boy, a Girl and a Bike (1947) nowadays; but then it spoke to millions of people who filled the roads every morning and evening, and at the weekends.

Yet the sport was bedevilled by a ceaseless war among the governing bodies, in which the riders were caught in the cross-fire. Great riders like George Lander were deprived of careers and often lost to the sport. Whitfield is right to refer to the ‘hatreds' which this corrosive atmosphere engendered: the bitterness continues to the present day. There was the row about who really ran what, the amateur/independent/professional divide, the impression that sport was really about a bunch of reactionary self-appointed officials, some of them, unfortunately, still around.

The weekly Cycling objected to road racing's love-affair with things European, but there was nothing they could do. The loss of British component manufacturers wasn't entirely a matter of fashion: most of their products were badly-made rubbish, and nothing would equal the Campagnolo Gran Sport derailleur until the 1970s.

Yet cycle sport in the UK continued to thrive, despite its problems, which always included a serious lack of money. Tens of thousands rode hundreds of time-trials every weekend. Our performances abroad throughout the 1950s were remarkable, but by the 1960s they were a memory. Why didn't we continue to do well? Probably because, uniquely among western European countries, we never had a real professional class. Eastern Europe had their own professionals, of course.

The performances of all the riders of any note during the period are recorded here: the great Booty, the remarkable Frank Colden, Hitchen, Metcalfe, Peter Hill, West, Norman Sheil, Tom Simpson of course, John Atkins, hundreds of successful riders on road, track and mud. Some acquired a wider than British fame, others (Alf Engers) remained isolated in this dripping island. Errors are mostly down to proof-reading – canon-ball, lynchpin, some foreign names. ‘Baty' in the picture on page 102 is Ken Hill, and Ron Jowers used, for the day, big gears – 92 rather than 84. There's a photo on every page, the best ones from originals, others scanned from magazine pictures. People my age will spend hours flipping through them.

Ramin Minovi