The Brooklands Podcast

Doug McKiernan is a British Formula One and aerospace aerodynamics engineer. He is currently the chief technical officer at Zero Petroleum which he co-founded alongside Paddy Lowe and Nilay Shah focusing on the development of sustainable synthetic fuels for motorsport and wider transport applications.

James Dornor is the visionary Founder & CEO of Driven By Us,, a pioneering community-driven organisation dedicated to empowering aspiring leaders from ethnic minorities and underserved groups within automotive and motorsport industries.

James talks with Mark Jarman about his life and career to date in motorsport and what has motivated him throughout his lived experience and instrustry insights to creating Driven By Us, to bridge the gap between underrepresented talent and the motorsport industry.

A very entertaining Derek Daly talks with Harry about his life in motorsport.

Derek graduated all the way from Irish Formula Ford to Formula One on pure merit. His rise through the junior formulae was meteoric, winning the Formula Ford Festival ahead of Derek Warwick in 1976, then taking the British Formula 3 spoils the following year. He made his Grand Prix debut the next year, less than two years after graduating from Formula Ford. After driving for the March, Tyrrell and Williams Formula One teams, Derek moved stateside, racing in the Indianapolis 500, and going on to achieve much success in endurance racing, including completing at Le Mans for Jaguar. After retirement from driving, Derek re-invented himself as a highly successful motivational speaker, drawing on his experiences in his motorsport career.

Tom Crean was the unsung hero of Antarctic exploration, whose incredible exploits with Captain Scott and Ernest Shackleton were overlooked for 80 years. Crean, who ran away from home as a teenager, served on three expeditions to the Antarctic, and spent longer on the ice than either Scott or Shackleton. He was among the last to see Scott alive near the South Pole in 1912 and returned to the ice to bury his frozen body. Crean was also a major figure on Shackleton's Endurance expedition; he crossed the Southern Ocean with Shackleton in an open boat, trekked over the glaciers and mountains of South Georgia and returned to rescue his comrades marooned on the desolate Elephant Island. But Tom Crean never spoke about his exploits, never wrote a book nor kept a diary, taking his remarkable story to the grave.

Polar historian Michael Smith, who researched and wrote the definitive account of Crean’s life, presents a fascinating account.

David talks about his father Jack Brabham and the evolution of the Brabham F1 team, through David's multi discipline motorsport successes to the development of the current radical technical Formula One era.

Peter Grimsdale talks with the author Midge Gillies about her passion in writing this book and the stories of six female aviators from the early days of aviation. This is the astounding story of the six female aviators who battled to become the first woman to cross the Atlantic Ocean by plane.

In the early 20th century, the dream of crossing the Atlantic by air was as potent as putting a man on the moon would be 50 years later. But many people believed women too fragile and lacking in the skills to endure the gruelling conditions of flying long distances.

In Atlantic Furies, Midge Gillies uncovers the stories of Elsie Mackay, Lady Anne Savile, Frances Grayson, Ruth Elder, Amelia Earhart, and Mabel Boll. These courageous, rule-breaking aviators risked everything to prove that women could fly the Atlantic. Some had lied to their families in order not to be stopped, others duped the press about their intentions and, ultimately, three lost their lives, but each pushed the boundaries of the possible.

Atlantic Furies celebrates the bravery, panache, and drive of these trail-blazing aviators, who showed the world that it wasn’t just men who could conquer the skies.

The powerful true story of the first flight across the Atlantic and the ordinary heroes who risked their lives in pursuit of progress.

In 1919, in Newfoundland, four teams of aviators came from Britain to compete in “the Big Hop”: an audacious race to be the first to fly, non-stop, across the Atlantic Ocean. One pair of competitors was forced to abandon the journey halfway, and two pairs never made it into the air. Only one team, after a death-defying sixteen-hour flight, made it to Ireland.

Celebrated on both continents, the transatlantic contest offered a surge of inspiration—and a welcome distraction—to a public reeling from the Great War and the influenza pandemic. But the seven airmen who made the attempt were quickly forgotten, their achievement overshadowed by the solo Atlantic flights of Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart years later.

In The Big Hop, David grants the pioneering aviators of 1919 the spotlight they deserve. From Harry Hawker, the pilot who as a young man had watched Houdini fly over Australia, to the engineer Ted Brown, a US citizen who joined the Royal Flying Corps, David traces the lives of the unassuming men who performed extraordinary acts in the sky.

Mining evocative first-person accounts and aviation archives, David also follows the participants’ journeys: learning to fly on flimsy aeroplanes made of timber struts and varnished fabric; surviving the bloodiest war that Europe had ever yet seen; and battling faulty coolant systems, severe storms, and extreme fatigue while attempting the Atlantic. David transports readers to the world in which the great contest took place and trace the rise of aviation to its daredevil peak in the early decades of the twentieth century.

The author Russell Hayes talks with Brooklands.tv's Gareth Tarr about the book's compilation.

Aston Martin is the Great British survivor among car manufacturers. Created as Bamford & Martin in 1913, Aston Martin’s subsequent century-long existence has seen the company go bust seven times, win the Le Mans 24 Hours and become indispensable transport for a certain movie spy. This comprehensive and timely two-volume study by Russell Hayes covers Aston Martin’s adventure from the very beginning, setting the cars in context with the changing automotive world and rivals, and adding insights from contemporary road tests and first-hand accounts from recent company personalities. Fourteen chapters make sense of every Aston Martin for both the cognoscenti and the uninitiated, supported by a lavish array of photographs.

Recorded in Michael's studio at his home in 2024, he talks with Mark Jarman of Brooklands.tv about his life painting aircraft and how by flying in them he was able to produce the desired results!

When Hazel Hill was just 13 years old, her father came home with a challenge for her.

As a scientific officer at the Air Ministry in 1934, Captain Fred Hill felt that Spitfires and Hurricanes should be armed with eight guns, instead of the four they were initially designed with. However, there were concerns that aircraft would be unable to fly with the added weight.

Hazel was a talented mathematician so he asked her to do the calculations for him.

They were able to prove that eight guns were possible, and the firepower of the RAF was dramatically improved ahead of the Battle of the Britain. This would prove to be absolutely vital, giving the RAF the edge it so desperately needed.

Hazel's son Ted and grand daughter Felicity came to Brooklands and met with Beatrice Merridan, Head of Collections & Audience Engagement and Kathryn Selwyn, Research and Collections Officer to talk about Hazel and her dad Fred Hill.