On Your Bicycle
The illustrated story of cycling by Jim McGurn
£16.95
‘Man's most perfect machine’, ‘the camel of the occident’, ‘the ghost of a departed spider’: the bicycle has been described in many ways. For Goldsworthy it was ‘responsible for more movement in manners and morals than anything else since Charles II’. In 1970s Chile, Allende's government declared that socialism can only be achieved on a bicycle. Historians have largely ignored its importance yet few themes offer such a rich variety of material and insights into social change.
Over 230 pages, with 220 mono and colour images, On Your Bicycle describes cycling’s vivid role in our lives over more than two centuries. The story takes us from the often wayward inventions of the amateur mechanics to the pedal-driven boneshakers of the 1860s. Then to the high-wheeled cycles now known as ‘penny farthings’ – associated with speed and daring, and a club culture complete with uniforms and bugles. Then to the upper-class cycling passions of the 1890s, thanks to chain-driven, smaller-wheeled, pneumatic-tyred ‘safety’ cycles. The bicycle enabled forms of liberation to women and eventually brought freedom and mobility to millions and inspired huge varieties of cycle sport.
Cycling's mixed fortunes in the motor age are also chronicled. Between the wars holidays-with-pay, combined with an extensive rail network, enabled excursions to the Great Outdoors. The last chapter shows how cycling’s post war decline was halted when new generations took to cycling as a healthy, practical and ecologically respectable activity, with some recognising cycling as a positive counter-cultural activity.
On your Bicycle, the Illustrated Story of Cycling, was first published by John Murray and this is the updated second edition. It is not available through bookshops or Amazon.
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