I had intended to write a review for filler content for the Newsletter, but for another month at least, that isn't a problem.

KIM THE KIWI ON THE KÖNIGAuthor: Tim HannaPublished: Finish Line Productions 2010509pp.This book mysteriously arrived in my pack at Cycletreads, as part of the "amelioration package" when my deal on tyres was visited by the ****-up Fairy. They seemed to have a fair few of them floating around. Maybe they have acquired some remaindered stock, because the book was published a while ago: if you do want a copy, they gottem.Books of this genre are not normally my favourite: I'd rather be out riding my own bike than read about others, but I had nothing to read in Wellington the night I got the book, and it saved finding a second hand bookstore. I started reading, and was very quickly hooked.Kim Newcombe was a New Zealand mechanic, and very successful scrambles rider in both Australia and New Zealand who headed for Germany with a very young wife in tow to take up a job as a development rider and mechanic for Maico.He never got there. Instead a fill in position in an outboard motor manufacturing firm turned into a job designing, building and developing road racing bikes using a two stroke, water-cooled, 4 cylinder boxer motor. This progressed to test riding, then racing. In his first full season on the Grand Prix circuit, Kim came second in the 500cc class. A phenomenal achievement. Shortly thereafter he died after a race accident in the UK, possibly as a result of blatant medical mismanagement.During his brief and meteoric road racing career Kim became a leader amongst the Grand Prix riders advocating for safer tracks and better facilities. The race riders of that time rode on very dangerous circuits, on bikes that were, by today's standards, lethally difficult to point where you wanted to go, harder to stop, except when they seized up, and without the benefit of the high standard of protective gear that is available today. Often the only difference between their race bikes and our road bikes of the era that we called Widowmakers already, was that the race machines just had a whole lot more power than our bikes. Tyres and brakes were pretty much the same. Riders cojones were probably a lot bigger than ours!Tim Hanna follows Kim's life in great detail. Clearly he has "reimagined" much of the conversation in the text from a great deal of research among Kim's friends and relatives, which can be an annoying technique, but in Hanna's hands it has made for compelling reading.For those of a a BMW bent, there is a lot of historical comment about the marque at the end of their giant-killing term as the kings of sidechair racing. Nothing is new under the sun: some of their team's comments about BMW parts availability and costs could have been lifted from this Forum! There is also some intriguing reading about how Kim became involved with the development of a proof-of-concept two stroke R90S for the powers that be at BMW. A lightweight 350, with fifty percent more pony than the Bee-Em boxer.I found it an intriguing read: like many of us, I was aware of Kim Newcombe, but knew very little about him. This book paints a great picture of the man and his achievements.It's a sizeable thing at 509 pages, and that makes it a bit of a clumsy thing to manhandle around for reading in bed, but in a favourite chair, with a bevvie at your elbow, it would keep you quiet and out of she-who-must-be-obeyed's hair for quite a while. My copy is sitting on our bookshelf, and it is free to the first biker who walks up my drive and asks for it, on condition they keep passing it on amongst the brotherhood.