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At 75, the writer has lived a more than full life. Mosley was born into luxury. His parents were hereditary nobles, and his father inherited a substantial fortune. But in 1940, 11 weeks after he was born, both parents were interned for their political beliefs.
His father, Sir Oswald Mosley, (later Baron Ancoats), was the founder-president of the British Union of Fascists. His mother, Lady Diana, was a personal friend of Hitler, as was her sister, Unity Valkyrie Mitford. They were married in Goebbel’s house with Hitler in attendance. (Sir Oswald was the inspiration for P G Wodehouse’s character, Roderick Spode.)
Mosley was brought up by a nanny, and occasionally visited his parents in jail. He didn't get much schooling. His parents moved around Ireland, Spain and France after they were released. Mosley did learn fluent German and French, he managed to pass the exam and gain admission to study physics in Christ Church College, Oxford. He even became Secretary of the Oxford Union before he qualified as a barrister, married early and entered practice.
Just as his legal career was getting started, he developed a taste for racing cars. The first race he saw was an F1 thriller at Silverstone in 1961. Stirling Moss won ahead of John Surtees, Jim Clark and Bruce McLaren. Mosley instantly decided he wanted to be part of that milieu. He became part-owner of a successful racing team, March, which designed and built cars.
His legal training meant that he soon became a negotiator on behalf of the Formula One Constructors Association. The chief FOCA negotiator and finance whiz was a 30-something used-car salesman and practical joker named Bernie Ecclestone.
Their 40-year association transformed F1. Motorsports politics are byzantine in their complexity. But this duo wheeled and dealt the pants off everyone. They complemented each other well as they negotiated with officials of the motorsports association, the Fédération Internationale du Sport Automobile (FISA) and the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), hammering out revenue shares and TV rights.
Eventually, Mosley ended up on the other side of the fence, as President of the FIA, after serving a brief stint as FISA president as well. (FISA is an arm of FIA). Ecclestone, of course, ended up as CEO, a position that has made him a billionaire.
Quite apart from building Formula 1 into a global craze, Mosley’s reign was hugely positive in terms of its emphasis on safety. The 1960s had a horrendous record, with deaths dime-a-dozen. He witnessed a death in the first international race he drove, an F2 in Hockenheim Germany, where world champion, Jim Clark was killed.
In 1993, Mosley became FIA President. The last fatal F1 accident occurred in 1994, when world champion, Ayrton Senna, and a debutant, Ronald Ratzenburger died at Imola. The 21-year hiatus in fatal accidents is not a coincidence.
After Imola, Mosley set up a technical safety committee. He also persuaded the European Union to set up safety committees and review transport safety standards. Incidentally, Mosley went to Ratzenburger's funeral in Austria because “all the great and good went to Senna’s funeral” and he thought somebody should be there for the young man’s parents.
In March 2008, aged 67, he participated in an elaborately staged prison camp S&M scenario, with five women in a Chelsea flat. Mosley wore striped prison pyjamas; the women wore fake fetish uniforms. They took turns flogging each other. Some German was spoken (one of the women was German). It was entirely legal and “harmless fun”, according to Mosley and something he indulged in “once in a while”.
One of the participating women had been paid off by the Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid, The News of the World (TNOTW). Her husband was an MI5 agent, who bugged the flat. TNOTW published extracts from the video, alleging Mosley was a Nazi sympathiser. Given his antecedents, this stung. It also led to a breach of the relationship with Ecclestone who tried to get him to resign.
Mosley sued TNOTW for violation of privacy. The paper’s defence was that it was in the public interest to reveal Mosley was a closet Nazi. The court found for Mosley and he received a large award (though still being out of pocket). Subsequent phone-hacking scandals, such as when TNOTW hacked the mobile of a missing 13-year old child revealed how casually the paper used illegal methods.
Ever since, Mosley has spent time in sundry European courts trying to get the images expunged and un-indexed by search engines. He has favourable judgments from French and German courts and recently reached an agreement with Google. The images remain widely available, of course.
The book is meticulous in its detail and well-produced with interesting photographs. It is mandatory reading for anybody remotely interested in motor racing, especially in F1. It is written baldly, with no qualifiers. The insanity of that early life; the driving years and the multitude of fatal crashes witnessed; the manoeuvres; the strategising; personal tragedies like the death of his son from a heroin overdose; everything is described in a flat, unaffected tone. Whatever he might feel, Mosley doesn’t do public displays of emotion. That is Max Mosley, take it or leave it.
MAX MOSLEY
The autobiography Formula One and Beyond
Author: Max Mosley
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Pages: 496 pages
Price: Rs 799
