Sporting immortality often seems somewhat arbitrary: why do Fred Perry and Stanley Matthews remain household names when the great jockey Sir Gordon Richards is largely forgotten?

One can see, however, why the racing driver Richard Seaman has passed from our collective consciousness, despite being the dominant Briton in the sport in the years before the Second World War.

He was not all that well-known in his own time, even after winning the German Grand Prix in 1938: in Britain the public had little time in those days for what was seen as a toffs sport and, as Seaman himself noted, the press only covered motor racing when there was a juicy fatality.

Had he lived longer he might have clocked up enough wins to secure an irrevocable place in the pantheon of national heroes; but he was killed after crashing into a tree during the Belgian Grand Prix in June 1939. He was 26.

There was also a wilful element in the subsequent British amnesia where Seaman was concerned. He was tainted by the crowning honour of his career: the invitation, approved by Hitler, to drive for the German Mercedes-Benz team, at that time the best in the world.

When he signed up with Mercedes-Benz in 1937, it was approved of by the political classes of both countries as a useful bit of soft diplomacy. But as the international situation deteriorated, not everybody thought he should have politely joined in with the Nazi salutes on the podium after his Grand Prix win; and with his funeral in Knightsbridge held a matter of weeks before the declaration of war being dominated by a six-foot-high wreath of white Madonna lilies bearing the Fhrers condolences, uncomplicated mourning of a great Briton was not possible.

In the words of Long John Silver, You cant touch pitch and not be mucked, lad. But now Richard Williams one of our most elegant sportswriters and author of a fine book on Ayrton Senna has written a biography of Seaman that seeks to remind us of his unfairly expunged sporting achievements and also, in an undogmatic way, defend him against charges of excessive enthusiasm for the Nazis.

Dick Seaman and what an appropriately virile name for a star of this most Freudian of sports was born to well-off parents in 1913. This book is able to explore its subjects pre-fame life to a degree unusual in biography, as Williams has struck on a little pot of gold: an unpublished memoir by Seamans mother, Lilian.

The book often reads like a mums-eye-view. There is some comedy, albeit rather poignant, early on, when Dick starts to become seriously interested in racing at Cambridge, and Lilian indulges in subterfuge to hide his dangerous activities from her elderly, sickly husband and, at the same time, conceal the full extent of his fathers disapproval from Dick. Later on, the story becomes tragic when Dick and his mother are estranged because of his marriage to a German girl.

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A Race with Love and Death by Richard Williams review: the Briton who raced for Hitler - Telegraph.co.uk