Turn Left – The Riffs Have Risen – From England to Cape Town in a Baby Car by A. Cameron Gilg, edited by Barry Cockcroft

Turn Left – The Riffs Have Risen, subtitled From England to Cape Town in a Baby Car, is by A. Cameron Gilg, with some anecdotes contributed by Walter Kay, edited by Barry Cockcroft and with an editorial note by Colin McElduff, FRGS, FRAI. It was first published in 1981 as an RAC publication under the Traveller’s Realm imprint of the Publishing Division of the Royal Automobile Club, 83–85 Pall Mall, London, and printed and bound by The Garden City Press, Letchworth. This is the first edition hardcover, bound in orange cloth with gilt lettering on the spine.

Turn Left – The Riffs Have Risen tells the story of a journey from England to Cape Town in a small “baby” car. The contents run from Boulogne to Gibraltar and on through Africa, and the book is illustrated with photographs, including a frontispiece of the two travellers meeting again for the first time since their journey, beside a vintage car. The cover picture, as the copyright page records, shows Kay with his “Baby” on the road to Adrar.

An overland drive the length of Africa in a light car is an adventure that sits squarely between motoring history and African travel, and this RAC edition brings the account to print with editorial notes.

Turn Left – The Riffs Have Risen will appeal to collectors of vintage motoring books, readers of African travel and overland journeys, and anyone with an interest in early motoring across the continent.

Condition – Good

Orange cloth boards with gilt spine lettering, clean and square. The pictorial dust jacket shows general shelf wear, with a line of small surface losses and brown spots along the front edge of the front panel, light rubbing to the spine ends and corners, and minor marks to the panels. Foxing is present to the endpapers and as light spotting to the page edges, and the jacket flaps are toned at the folds. The binding is firm and the text block clean.