` As if Bill Bryson had taken to two wheels` FTSomewhere in a German forest 200 years ago, during the darkest, wettest summer for centuries, the story of cycling began. The calls to ban it were more or less immediate. Re: Cyclists is the tale of the following two centuries. It tells how cycling became a kinky vaudeville act for Parisians, how it was the basis of an American business empire to rival Henry Ford`s, & how it found a unique home in the British Isles. The Victorian love of cycling started with penny-farthing riders, who explored lonely roads that had been left abandoned by the coming of the railways. Then high-society took to it
- in the 1980s the glittering parties of the London Season featured bicycles dancing in the ballroom, & every member of the House of Lords rode a bike. Twentieth-century cycling was very different, & even more popular. It became the sport & the pastime of millions of ordinary people who wanted to escape the city smog, or to experience the excitement of a weekend`s racing. Cycling offered adventure & independence in the good times, & consolation during the war years & the Great Depression. Re: Cyclists tells the story of cycling`s glories & also of its despairs, of how it only just avoided extinction in the motoring boom of the 1960s. & finally, at the dawn of the 21st century, it celebrates how cycling rose again
- a little different, a lot more fashionable, but still about the same simple pleasures that it always has been: the wind in your face & the thrill of two-wheeled freedom.