Bravo Segrave!: Sir Henry Segrave and the Meaning of the World Land Speed Record

On March 29, 1927, Sir Henry Segrave hurtled down Florida's Daytona Beach to establish a new world land speed record of 203 mph. Two years later, Segrave returned to Daytona Beach to reclaim the land speed record for England, driving at over 231 mph. His achievements were hailed in every leading newspaper in England and the United States. This article interrogates the cultural significance of Segrave's feats and argues that Segrave personified an era intoxicated with the allure of speed and infatuated with the power of the machine. Segrave also straddled the cultural divide between the values and virtues of the Victorian era and the emergence of the new technologically sophisticated modern world. Even more significantly, Segrave stood astride a tectonic shift in the place and role of England in the postwar world.