A motorcycle museum is looking to reunite the family of a British gold star racer with his letters archiving his experiences.

Victor Hood, who lived in Tennyson Avenue, New Malden, competed with the British Motor-Cycle Racing Club at Brooklands race track in Weybridge before the Second World War.

He was one of only 180 riders to be awarded the British Motor-Cycle Racing Club gold star for his win in a five-lap competition, in which he raced at speeds of more than 100mph, in June, 25, 1938.

The former RAF captain’s motorbike has been at the Norfolk Motorcycle Museum for 18 years where a volunteer recently discovered 12 letters sent to a Norwich man who bought the Rudge TT replica.

In one of his letters addressed to a Mr Moore he thanks him for his decision to buy the Rudge motorbike from him, in August 1943.

He wrote: “This confounded war has unfortunately put me rather ‘in the spot’ so far as the Rudge is concerned as the very occasional and brief moments which I am able to snatch don’t lend themselves too well to carefully and painstakingly assembling a racing machine in the way that I was accustomed to and I am somewhat anxious as to your feelings if this is going to be much of a delay.”

Later in the same month, having shipped the bike to Mr Moore, he wrote again and said: “I hope that you have received the Rudge in good order.

“In my last letter posted yesterday I omitted to tell you that the railway company stated that it wouldn’t be possible to insure the machine in any way unless it were packed in a very extensive way and that was entirely beyond me in the time available as well as the absence of packing materials.

“So I sincerely trust it arrived safely?”

Capt Hood raced almost exclusively at Brooklands between 1935 and 1939 and took part in 16 races on his Rudge motorcycle.

His last appearance before serving his country at RAF Westcott was also the final British Motor-Cycle Racing Club meeting before the Second World War and the last at Brooklands.

His trophy is on show at Brooklands museum.

Andrew Neall, from the Norfolk museum that houses Captain Hood’s old Rudge, said: “We would like to find out more about Vic and his racing career. Did he race again after the war?

“We would be delighted to let any descendants have copies of the letters. They are motorcycle and social history to us but family history to them.”