Hilditch: the final memoir
Title: Steel Wheels and Rubber Tyres, Vol. 4
Author: Geoffrey Hilditch
Publisher: Venture Publications
ISBN: 978-1-90530-481-3
Specification: 235mm x 165mm, 112pp, softback
Price: £20
Those who have read the first three parts of Geoffrey Hilditch’s autobiography, recalling a career in transport that began as a childhood interest, peaked when he was general manager of municipal undertakings in Great Yarmouth, Halifax and Leicester and ended in 1999 with the sale of an independent operator, will have waited eagerly for this final part. Like the third part, it is published posthumously, as Hilditch died in June 2014, aged 88.
It covers his departure from Leicester in August 1984, subsequent roles with the Department of Transport, Cynon Valley Transport, Drawlane Transport and then back with Leicester Citybus for its final years in municipal ownership. An account — like the earlier ones — that he tells very much from his own perspective with the aid of a daily diary.
The government post was bus operations advisor, helping civil servants turn Nicholas Ridley’s Transport Bill into the Transport Act 1985 that deregulated and partially privatised the industry, and turned municipal underta…
