[TR] A NEW book by John Macartney

[johnbmacartney at gmx.com]

Listers,



I don't know how large this list is in terms of names count but just before
the Millenium, a very large number of you most kindly bought a book from me
titled "In the Shadow of my Father - Life at Triumph". Originally, I thought
a thousand copies would be enough but it later went through two re-prints of
1,500 and 1,000 copies to meet demand and I still have a few (less than 100)
copies left. However, this post is not about that book.



This last week, I thought I'd let you know I signed a contract with a
London, England publisher for my latest book called "FROM IRON CROSS TO THE
CROSS OF NAILS". It was originally my late father's story to tell but he was
dogged by ill-health after retiring from Standard-Triumph in the 1960's and
never got to write the narrative. After some forty years of research on my
part and several complete re-writes, the story is finished. If you're
interested in automotive history - especially if it's to do with Jaguar and
Standard-Triumph - you may well be interested in my latest offering. It
concerns the escape from Austria in the summer of 1939 of two people, both
Jews, who were the official and only importers and distributors for Austria
for cars made by The Standard Motor Company and SS Limited - which post-war
became Jaguar Cars. The two people in question were Hans and Monika Koch and
a very compressed version of their story appeared in "In the Shadow of my
Father" but in "From Iron Cross" you get the full story in every detail and
you'll get to *meet* Sir John Black (CEO Standard Motor Co) and Sir William
Lyons (CEO Jaguar), read about some of their conversations and how they
helped the Kochs in the early weeks of their unplanned and very coincidental
arrival in England just before the outbreak of WW2. Speaking entirely for
myself, the Koch's story has always fascinated me because what husband and
wife both did - and on the spur of the moment without any prior planning of
note - to avoid the horrors of places like Auschwitz, Bergen Belsen and
Mauthausen to name but three places, defies comprehension. But somehow, they
won through and against the most extraordinary odds. I didn't get the bones
of this story just from Dad because in 1964 when my internship at Jaguar was
coming to an end, I spent nine months in Vienna working for GHM KOCH
AUTOMOBILE when it was still the Jaguar importer. That stay gave me a superb
opportunity to check many facts of the story, read a lot of the
documentation and study some important surviving artefacts to do with this
man and his wife's escape from the jaws of the SS and Reichsfuhrer Heinrich
Himmler's mob of sadists.



That's the basic background. The book is scheduled to appear in the Spring
of 2023 but at the time of writing I have no idea of its pricing. I do know
it will be available as a print on demand from Amazon in the UK, Barnes &
Noble (I think), together with e-book versions and on Kindle. If you'd like
more info when it becomes available, I'm working with the publisher to
identify possible buyers. Just drop me an email to this address giving me
your name, postal address and email contact details and I'll come back to
you when more detail such as ISBN number and likely prices are available.
Please feel free to circulate this email to your Jaguar and Triumph club
friends and if you feel your club newsletter editor would like details for a
forthcoming issue, I'd be pleased to hear from him or her.



Finally, I think this story is somewhat apocryphal as I signed the
publishing contract on the last day of Holocaust Memorial Week. A bit
creepy, huh?



Jonmac



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