I have a confession to make: This book made me so angry years ago, it planted the seed for the idea to write a critizism on all Norton books known to me.

The book was written in 1990/91, when the hype surrounding the Norton JPS racers was at its peak, and the Norton F1 was about to be launched. Osprey Books desperately wanted to cash in on that, so they got a totally unknown author, Kris Perkins, to write a book on those wonderbikes- the only other mention of him as an author I can find is a 1993 book on Indy (car!) racing.

According to the dustcover, Perkins spent years researching the book. If this was so, why did he repeat all the then current factory propaganda ("The Interpol II fairing was designed to look like the BMW Police bike one, so the Nortons would not stand out in a parade", covering the fact they were but a blatant pirate copy of something that worked, etc,etc)?

 And why does it look and read like it was banged together within a few weeks?

A lot of the pictures are contemporary Norton and JPS ones, reproduced in often apalling quality; the others look like they were shot on a day's visit in the Shenstone factory, resp. the 1990 Birmingham Show.

The text, as said above, is an admiring, totally uncritical, repetion of the factory propaganda of the time, with a bit of hero-worship thrown in (the then virulent Crighton/LeRoux/Garside syndrome).

Interesting, in spite of what I previously said, are the pictures of some early prototype exercises, more in regards of styling than technically; interesting, too, the (pictorial) material on the Seymour/Powell involvement.

Why am I so annoyed? Because this book has, as far as publishers are concerned, covered the very interesting Norton rotary development, production and racing theme. If someone was to come up with a truthful, educated and historically correct account (come on, Richard Negus and Bob Rowley!), I fear no publisher would now be interested.

To be fair to the author, the book was finished just as the house of cards came down with the banks moving in, the removal of LeRoux, and the factory being left to the likes of Graham Williams and McDonald, and thus going down the plug. So with the benefit of hindsight we now know and understand far more than those of us, who were at the various fronts within the company, did at the time.

In short: though I can not recommend this book, for the time being and possibly forever this is the only book on the rotary era. Just don't take it seriously.