Upon hearing the word "Holland", many will conjure up a colourful yet tranquil picture. A vision of tulip fields soaking up the summer sunshine, with perhaps a windmill silhouetted against the pale blue sky. A peaceful country with a peace- loving people. And yet, true as this tranquility is, Holland is a country which also produced a whole crop of world-class motorsports men in the halycon days before World War Two.
This book tells the story of perhaps the greatest, and certainly now the most famous of those fine-driving Dutchmen: Maurice Gatsonides., the irrepresible "Gatso" to his many friends, and whose international rally driving career spanned a half century. The reader is taken on a lifetime journey which began more than eighty years ago. A journey in which the thrills of being at the wheel of high- powered cars (often of British manufacture) across the great mountain passes of Europe are experienced as the battle for victory in the Monte Carlo Rally, the Alpine Rally and many others is being fought.
Adventures there are also of a different sort, including the early days of civil aviation when Gatso reached aircrew status with the Royal Dutch Airline, KLM. And the dangerous adventures in Nazi- occupied Holland during the final two years of the war when, using his difficult to get permit (for coal-gas-powered) motorcars, his activities included transporting starving children (some Jewish) from the cities to outlying farms in Friesland, and also clandestine jobs for the Dutch resistance. Also he used the Gatsonides residence as a hiding place for fellow Dutchmen wanted by the Nazis for forced labour in Germany.
This journey through life by Maurice Gatsonides has been so far one of many triumphs indeed, in both motorsport and, more recently, the high-tech business world, but nevertheless punctuated at times by disillusionment, and, on one occasion even tragedy. It is a journey which continues today with the evergreen Gatso, now 82 years old, with his son Tom leading their Gatsonides company to pre-eminence in the high-tech field of electronic surveillance, time and speed measuring equipment.