The Boy

Stirling Moss: A Life in 60 Laps

By: Richard Williams

Narrated by: Richard Williams

Length: 7 hrs and 46 mins

Publisher's summary

Shortlisted for the Sports Writing Book of the Year Award

Even in the midst of a global pandemic, the death of Stirling Moss on 12 April 2020 at the age of 90 made headlines, almost 60 years after he retired from Formula One. In The Boy, Richard Williams assesses what made him such an iconic figure.

Told in 60 brief chapters, Williams builds a fascinating and revealing portrait of a driver who was a hero to millions. As the long years of war began to recede, sport in Britain was getting moving again and there was a need for heroes. Denis Compton and Stanley Matthews were in their pomp, playing to packed houses. But Stirling Moss was a fresh face, just 17 years old when he first emerged in 1947. Too young to have served and been scarred by the war, he was soon revealed to possess not only an unearthly degree of skill but the qualities of courage and resolution noted in the generation that fought in the air and on land and sea. Their youth had been stolen; his was new and unspoiled.

The Boy explains how and why he came to occupy such a unique place in the esteem and the affections of the nation. Why him, rather than some of his contemporaries, such as Mike Hawthorn and Peter Collins, who shared a role in the rise of Britain as a power in international motor racing? Moss may never have been world champion, but he created a remarkable and enduring legacy, and Williams brilliantly shows just how he did it.

©2021 Richard Williams (P)2021 Simon & Schuster UK

Critic reviews

"Captures the bold, engaging spirit of one of Britain’s best-loved sporting heroes" (Sunday Times)

"A fascinating read and sure to be the definitive account of his life." (Mark Knopfler)

Great book

Great story! What a legend! Would have loved to have seen him race and hear his stories.

Difficult to follow

Moss was an interesting figure, but there doesn’t seem to be any organization to the book; at least not chronological. The narrator jumps back and forth in the timeline, which made this history hard to follow.

Good story made dreary

The life of Stirling Moss was exciting and dramatic, and Richard Williams' meticulously researched book is a font of stats and information. Every race is described in detail. I confess that I found it sometimes uninteresting in the microscopic nature of this, but that may have been the effect of the reader, who is the author himself. He sounds bored most of the time, with little light and shade in his delivery. Overall I was amazed that a life that exemplified the Zeitgeist could have been made a bit dull.

Disappointing

Having enjoyed Maurice Hamilton’s biography of Niki Lauda very much, I was very disappointed by this. Unlike Hamilton’s book, it seemed to offer few new insights into the man - and the effort put into a somewhat out of place rant on modern politics close to the end, would have been better used in trying to divine what might have been going on in the mind of Enzo Ferrari in his various dealings with Moss. As with many racing biographies, there are accounts of the various grands prix - but these are a matter of record, and can be found on Wikipedia; I look for more thought provoking material in a biography, and regrettably, this one didn’t provide it.