Fay Taylour, 'The World's Wonder Girl'

Book excerpt: Fay Taylour (1904-1983) remains the most successful female motorsports champion. She defeated the foremost male motorcycle speedway stars of the 1920s and 1930s. A household name in Britain and her native Ireland, she won further fame on the track in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Her successes against men led to a ban on women competing against them in the UK, but Fay Taylour carried on, racing around the world. She also built a new career in long distance car racing and carved a name for herself in the new sport of midget car racing. All of this came to a halt with the outbreak of the Second World War, which, controversially, saw Fay Taylour join Oswald Mosley’s fascist movement and become part of an underground pro-Hitler campaign in London. She was imprisoned for three years by the British authorities. After the war, she was one of the very few pre-war women motorsports champions to return to the track. She re-established her career with highly successful tours in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, before moving to the USA. There she first sold sports cars in Hollywood before returning to midget-car racing across America. Later banned from the USA for her earlier politics, she again took to racetracks around the world, competing against the world’s best well into her fifties. This first full biography of Fay Taylour is based on her extensive personal papers, media reports of her racing career around the world, and decades of UK government security files. It covers Taylour’s life on and off the track, her struggles with sports and security authorities, her battles against anti-female prejudices, and her many passionate love affairs.