The White Ghost, as Ken Le Breton was known to all, was born in Sydney in 1924. After riding in Australia he came to the UK in 1947 and became one of the favorite riders of his generation. Ken rode for Newcastle Diamonds in 1947-48 and Ashfield Giants in 1949-50. He returned to Australia in the winter of 1950 to continue racing, and was involved in a crash on his home track in a meaningless race on January 5, 1951. He never regained consciousness and died 24 hours later.

The post-war era was British speedway's golden age. Ten million spectators passed through the turnstiles of a record number of tracks at the sport's peak. With league gates as high as 80,000, speedway offered a colourful means of escape from the grim austerity of the times. A determinedly clean image, with no betting and rival fans mingling on the terraces, made speedway the family night out of choice. The sport thrived despite punitive taxation and Government threats to close down the speedways as a threat to industrial productivity. A three-division National League stretched from Exeter to Edinburgh and the World Championship Final attracted a capacity audience to Wembley. Test matches against Australia provided yet another international dimension. Even at the height of its popularity, speedway was a sporting edifice built on unstable foundations, which crumbled alarmingly as the 1950s dawned and Britain's economic and social recovery brought competing attractions like television.

Newspaper journalism is a romantic profession. The men and women who wrote for newspapers in the twentieth century started work in a 'Hold the front page!' atmosphere: hot metal, clicking typewriters and inky fingers. In this fascinating collection, the latest in the Scottish Working People's History Trust series, Ian MacDougall has captured the memories of 22 veteran journalists from a wide range of newspapers all over Scotland, some local, some national. The earliest entrant started work in 1929, just before the Great Depression, the latest in the mid 1950s. Their accounts, like so much of oral history, describe a physical world we have almost lost sight of since the computer revolution. But it was a different social world too: it would be unusual for school leavers today to start work as 'copy-boys' running out for cigarettes or filling gluepots for their scary older colleagues. Journalists had to turn their hands to anything from flower shows to air raids, from Hess's landing near Eaglesham to royal visits; and women often had to fight their corner to get started as young reporters. As journalist Neal Ascherson says in his foreword, the book contains 'a swathe of Scottish social history': virtually all these journalists made their way from humble backgrounds, drawn by the desire for an exciting rather than a safe job - and above all one full of human interest.