‘The Island of Blood’: death and commemoration at the Isle of Man TT Races

Abstract

The Isle of Man Tourist Trophy, the oldest motorcycle road racing event in the world, also remains one of the most controversial with a total of some 237 of competitors killed during its 104-year history. These fatalities are implicated within complex narratives of both remembrance and forgetting most evidently played out in the roadside memorials, place names and ‘cyber memorials’ created to commemorate the deaths. This paper provides a survey of these memorials along with an appraisal of their involvement in expressions of ‘public’ and ‘private’ grief.

Keywords:

• Isle of Man Tourist Trophy
• motorcycle racing
• death
• roadside memorial
• commemoration and grief