Formula 1 – The Autobiography

Edited by Gerald Donaldson

ISBN 0-297-84308-7

Published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £35.00

There’s much to be said for this bold idea. Divided into decades, with a brief section on the pre-world championship era, it aims to be a ‘one-stop shop’ of F1 history, interspersing brief race summaries with contemporary quotes, reports and memoirs to give a rounded first-hand view, rather than a historian’s insight.

The writers are all top-level names, but the end result falls short of what you might expect. Those names have little room to express themselves, while the various quotes have mainly been published before.

The layout tries too hard to be exciting, there are a lot of typo errors, and we don’t need a picture of Roger Williamson in his death throes. Full of readable elements, but with a feel of ‘experts compromised by committee’. GC