A rare book written by Raymond Mays which disappeared from the shops sixty years ago is back in circulation. It has been published by a motor racing enthusiast after finding what is believed to be the only surviving copy of this revealing memoir by the international driver and designer.

Mays (1899-1980), son of a Bourne businessman and motoring enthusiast, achieved fame in the world of motor racing on and off the track. After a successful career as a driver, he opened workshops in Bourne where he developed the BRM, the revolutionary Grand Prix car with a V16 engine that eventually became the first all-British model to win the world championship in 1962. He lived at Eastgate House in Bourne all his life and in 1978 was honoured with a CBE for his services to motor racing.

He is known to have written two books about his life and times but knowledge of a third surfaced two years ago although copies were extremely rare to find because the bulk of them had been destroyed soon after publication. The two published works were Split Seconds - My Racing Years (G T Foulis & Co Ltd, London, 1950) and BRM with co-author Peter Roberts (Cassell and Co Ltd, 1962) although he also contributed a chapter on hill climbing technique for Lord Howe's volume on Motor Racing (1939) and a piece for Speed: the Book of Racing and Records (1950).

Both books carrying his name are well known publications and many copies exist here in Bourne, notably at the Heritage Centre in South Street, home of the Raymond Mays Memorial Room which is devoted to his life and career. But there was a third entitled At Speed, published in 1952 by Hodder and Stoughton and printed by C Tinling and Co Ltd., of Liverpool, London and Prescot, a partnership that produced many popular books of the time, although it took a great deal of research to track it down.

Few people associated with Mays, either in Bourne or in the racing world, had heard of it. The publishers were unable to help because their records from that period no longer existed while the print firm folded in 1975 and there was no mention of it in the British Library, the country’s legal depository holding some 14 million titles and which receives copies of all books produced in the United Kingdom.

Furthermore there is no copy of it in the Raymond Mays Memorial Room and the BRM Association, the organisation founded in 2013 to promote the history and legacy of this famous car, knew nothing about it either but bit by bit, my researches revealed the story of this abortive biography.

The book was printed and put on sale in 1952, a bad year for the BRM which had been dogged by a long period of misfortune involving components and race tracks and was then facing financial difficulties and in danger of being wound up, although it was eventually sold to the engineering firm Rubery Owen.

The publication was a hardback with a red linen cover, 190 pages and ten photographs plus the frontispiece, a copy of the portrait in oils of Mays painted in 1950 by Sofy Asscher and which now hangs in the entrance foyer at the Red Hall at Bourne. Five hundred copies were printed at a cost of £800, the outlay being met by Mays himself.

In a section entitled Reflections, Mays wrote about his researches into the problems involved with the development of the V16 and the way they were eventually solved but he was particularly revelatory about the struggles of the BRM Trust and the team, the implications being of sufficient gravity to alarm the publishers. Lawyers were consulted and after some discussion, they took the drastic step of withdrawing the book and removing all unsold copies from the shops before being pulped, perhaps to avoid the risk of a legal action that might have had costly repercussions.

One copy survived and is now owned by Lindsay Johnson, aged 61, a retired civil servant, who lives at Bromley, Kent, and is related to Raymond Mays as a second cousin. It was given to him by a friend who bought it for £10 while browsing for publications connected with motor racing from a second hand bookshop at Hay-on-Wye, a small market town at Powys, Wales, close to the border with England where there are so many bookshops that it is often described as "the town of books".

This book, however, is a revised proof copy of the original with the offending paragraphs deleted and replaced by other photographs, as though ready for re-publication which did not happen, perhaps because Mays was unwilling to risk further expenditure. Other copies may exist but as the bulk of the print run was destroyed, they will have by now become valuable collectors’ items.

Lindsay Johnson therefore decided to make his copy of At Speed available to a wider public but he could not find a publisher. “Hardly any of the dozens I approached had even heard of Raymond Mays”, he said, “and when we came to discuss the costs involved I found printing and distribution all so complicated and expensive that it would have set me back a small fortune so I decided to have a go myself.”

The result is that At Speed has now been published in soft cover with 190 pages and 25 illustrations and is already on sale at the Brooklands race track in Surrey, a favourite venue where Mays once competed.

The re-appearance of this book also puts the record straight about what Raymond Mays left for posterity in the way of autobiography and in view of its rarity and the number of organisations now devoted to the history of the BRM and motor racing in general, there will be many supporters of the man and the motor car who will welcome this reprint and the enterprise of Lindsay Johnson is making it possible.

Copies are available at £6.99 including postage from Lindsay Johnson at 9 Beechmont Close, Bromley, Kent BR1 4NJ.