About Jim McGurn

I find it hard to answer when people ask me what I do. I have two passions which you might even call ‘professions’. One is popularising cycling through any means I can, and mostly through writing and publishing. My latest, biggest and most comprehensive book is Cycle Magic. It took me over three years to write and I have put into it everything I have learned and loved about our most wonderful invention and the amazing people who do such inspiring things with it. Also featured on this website is my On your Bicycle, an Illustrated Social History of Cycling. I’ve also co-published a book on bicycle design and have published/edited magazines and books such as Bike Culture and Encycleopedia in German and US editions. They lasted for nine creative years. I’m particularly proud of my Get Cycling guide for beginners which appeared in over 20 regional editions.

In 2008 my wife and I founded Get Cycling, a Community Interest Company specialising in cycling for people with disabilities: we have a son with disabilities and were dismayed at the quality, choice and cost of specialised cycle available, and at the lack of support services. Get Cycling has developed into the largest retail and support organisation for inclusive cycling in the UK. It’s a not-for-profit and I am proud to be its Executive Chair. More recently all its general events work was devolved into a separate, charitable, Community Benefit Society, owned by community shareholders, of which I’m one. It’s called Everybody’s Cycling. Both social enterprises are now run by people much better at it than me, and this has allowed me to ease out and pursue my writing interests.

My other ‘profession’ has been in modern languages. I began my working life as a teacher of languages and wrote three textbooks, some of which are still used in schools. I greatly enjoy giving illustrated talks on the family of European languages and hope one day to write a popularising book on the subject. I am certainly not an academic.

Inbetween times I have tried to promote an interest in oral history. It gives voice to people whose experiences are often ignored by academic historians. I set up the York Oral History Project (where I live) and co-published a book called Tyneside Memories – I’m a proud Geordie.

Cycle Magic is published by The Company of Cyclists. This may be a familiar name to cyclists. It’s a long-established company kept dormant for a while and which has been switched back to trading mode to publish cycling books.

My aim with Cycle Magic has been to share my lifelong fascinate for cycling in all its forms. I hope you find it open-minded, insightful, entertaining and useful. At the heart of the book is the bicycle, surely our happiest invention – so humble, so minimal, so diverse, so universally useful, so quietly glorious in its power and potential.

Jim, Sally and their son, Joe, in front of Get Cycling CIC

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