Winner of the Malcolm Jeal Award 2025

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Press release

The 2025 Malcolm Jeal Award for the best motoring history article to appear in print in English was presented at the SAHB’s autumn seminar at the Bromsgrove Hotel and Spa.

The Michael Sedgwick Award for the best book on motoring written in the English language was not awarded this year; although all the books considered had merits, none of them met all the requirements of the award: excellence in research, presentation, readability and novelty.

THE MALCOLM JEAL AWARD:

WINNER:

Mike Oakins: for his article “The Paulin Bentley and Soltau Hay.”
This formed the entirety of the 2025 issue, No. 4, of 1888, The Journal of the Bentley Memorial Foundation.

A journal of the standing of 1888 must have many claims on its space. The fact that it decided to devote its latest issue to a single car is a tribute to what Mike Oakins has achieved.

The article covers a lesser-known period of the Bentley’s life – that of its ownership by Soltau Hay from 1939 to 1969 and his preparation of the car to run at Le Mans between 1949 and 1951, with no factory support or commercial sponsorship.

Thanks to the assistance of the Hay family, Mike has had access to hitherto unpublished private correspondence, invoices and photographs. He has crafted from them a true story of determination and unexpected success, backed up by a remarkable mix of fascinating anecdote and detailed statistical and technical information.

The judges had no hesitation in choosing this article for the 2025 Malcolm Jeal Award.

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