Books & films His own books, the lives of him, and the screen

The books he wrote, or told to a writer. Many of their words are quoted in In his words.

A book of his own while he was still racing. Its title is given two ways: as in the heading here, and as In Track of Speed by the writers of the 8W history site, who quoted its account of the Mercedes-⁠Benz offer of 1954 in 2001. Its publisher has not been confirmed.

Told largely in his own words and mostly written before the Goodwood crash. In it he said he preferred never to have won the championship than to have won it only once, and named Jim Clark the most naturally gifted driver of the day.

Written with the writer Doug Nye. Juan Manuel Fangio wrote the foreword, addressed to Moss, and in it gave his own account of their racing together at Mercedes-⁠Benz in 1955.

Published for his 80th birthday: every race of his career, from 1948 to Goodwood in 1962, told in turn. Its count of 529 races is the one this tribute uses for his career as a whole. That October he guest-edited Motor Sport, which printed extracts.

Written with Simon Taylor, who had interviewed him at length for Motor Sport in 2006 and who spoke at the service for him in Westminster Abbey in 2024.

The memoir of Alfred Neubauer, the Mercedes-⁠Benz team manager of 1955, in its English edition, carries a foreword by Moss.

Three books by other hands, each from a different distance.

Edwards wrote Motor Sport’s cover story for Moss’s 70th birthday, in October 1999, and his was the only name on the list when a biographer was wanted. The book was to cover the private life as well as the racing, at Moss’s insistence, as In his words tells.

Subtitled The Inside Story of a Motor Racing Legend: the memoir of Valerie Pirie, who worked for him as his secretary from 1958 to 1965, sat at his bedside after Goodwood and managed his racing team in 1963. Motor Sport printed extracts in November 2019.

The Boy: Stirling Moss: A Life in 60 Laps, by the writer of The Guardian’s obituary of him. Its pages include a transcription of the This Is Your Life broadcast of 1959.

He was famous enough by the late 1950s for the BBC to build programmes round him, and from 1962 he was a broadcaster himself.

Eamonn Andrews surprised him outside the BBC Television Theatre, after an actor dressed as a motorcycle policeman had stopped his car on Shepherd’s Bush Green. The guests included his parents, his wife Katie, Ken Gregory, Alf Francis, Lance Macklin and Tommy Wisdom, and Fangio sent a filmed message from Rome. How it began is told in The early years, and what they said in What they said.

Half an hour of questions from John Freeman, in the week before Spa. Freeman later counted it almost the only one of his interviews that had pleased him.

A cameo, by Damien Smith’s account: Peter Sellers tells him to follow a car, and he sets off on foot.

A television documentary looking back at the Mille Miglia, made in a 300 SLR with Ian Wooldridge of the Daily Mail.

Richard Hammond and Moss on the brain injuries each of them had suffered in their crashes, and on coming back from them.

An hour on film with Mia Forbes Pirie, recorded before his illness of 2016 and released five weeks after his death.

A film of three and a half minutes, which Legacy tells: the 300 SLR No. 722, the car of his Mille Miglia, driven through London at dawn to his house in Mayfair, before it went back to the museum in Stuttgart.