And if you look hard enough, and long enough (and are lucky enough), you'll occasionally come across something like Karl Kling's autobiography from the mid-1950s.

Kling, for those whose knowledge of F1 history doesn't stretch much beyond the days when Michael wore blue, not red, was a works driver with the all-powerful post-war Mercedes team. Stumbling across this book marked the end of what had been a couple of happy weeks of hunting that had already seen Paul Frere's 'The Racing Porsches' and Nigel Snowdon's 'The Ultimate Excitement' join the bookshelf.

A quick lap of some of the online book dealers suggests that this particular copy of Kling's autobiography was a bit of a bargain, although the fact that it's desirability to serious collectors has presumably been diminished somewhat by the absence of a dust jacket might have something to do with that. Personally, I couldn't care less ­ books are there to be read, not kept in glass cases and handled only by people wearing gloves.

I'm a bit of a fan of the immediate pre-war and post-war German GP cars, and although Kling was not perhaps the absolute cream of the guys that got to drive them, he was still pretty handy. His abilities and exploits are communicated across the decades in a way that highlights not only his modesty, but his obvious intelligence and sense of humour.

Almost half a century down the track though, Kling's recollections are only a small part of what makes this book, and others like it, worth dipping into. As good as his story is, it is the broader context against which it was all played out that really stands out when you read it now.

Like virtually every driver of his era, Kling's career was punctuated by the war. From our perspective, it seems like Kling almost glosses over his experiences what was one of the most significant conflicts in the history of civilisation. But when you consider that all of Kling's experiences and post-war hardships were shared by virtually everyone else in Europe, no matter what side they were on, it's easy to guess why he saw no need to go deeply into it.

But the little bits and pieces that he drops in here and there do resonate. He jokes ­ because there was no point complaining about it ­ about how easy it could be for a reader to underestimate how hard it is to go racing on a diet of raw potatoes and raspberry jam, which was pretty much the only food that anybody in his area could get their hands on for a while immediately following the end of the war. He talks about the danger, as a German citizen, of walking to the team factory in occupied Stuttgart before he managed to find some back roads that would allow him to move around more or less freely.

He even talks of arriving by boat in New York as a member of the Mercedes team for a race, only to be locked up, without explanation, on Ellis Island for the weekend! (Apparently the American press went to great lengths to apologise afterwards, although similar sentiments from the authorities themselves were not forthcoming). But there are other, less political illustrations of what kind of world he was racing in, and one of the most vivid are his accounts of his travels. This was an era where widespread global travel was rare, difficult, time-consuming and expensive. Kling's career took him all over the place, and his impressions of the various locales that he found himself in are written in such a way that reminds you that at that time, the average European/Englishman/Australian's chances of visiting, say, South America were about as good as their chances of going to the moon.

So although Kling keeps his focus on the racing, there is a clear travelogue thread that runs throughout the whole book. It was an aspect of his life that Kling seemed to relish, and one that is mostly lost in a modern era where a GP driver sees little of a host country apart from the airport, the hotel, the race circuit, and the roads that connect the three.

But the bit that I loved most of all was the final chapter, where Kling hands the typewriter over to his wife Wilma for a female perspective on the racing life. Judging from Kling's disclaimer just before he makes way for Wilma: ("A word to over-cautious mothers: 'Please don't tear out the following pages. Your children can read them without coming to any harm'") this was not a usual practice in the mid-1950s.

It's a good thing that he decided to break the mould, because Wilma Kling's pages fill in a lot of the gaps left by Karl himself. While acknowledging how lucky the pair were to travel the world, she also points out that it was, for her, often a lonely lifestyle ­ and an anxious one, too, given the types of accidents that drivers were prone to having in cars of that period. She talks of how both she and Karl coped with the dangers of his profession "When you come to know Kling really well, and look at him closely after a race, you may notice his hands trembling slightly and his mouth set in a hard line: these are the only indications that, perhaps only two or three moments ago, he nearly lost his life."

She talks of dealing with the media, who would congregate at the Kling home upon his return from a race to hear about how he fared at, say, Rheims (no travelling media circus in those days!), and she also touches on the nature of celebrity ­ something that Karl himself was far too modest to address. They got a lot of mail, by the sound of it ­ but more than a few were begging for a slice of what was, by the standards of the time, a rather tidy pay packet.

"One of the most unusual (letters)", writes Wilma, "came from a man who wanted to know the address of a millionaire in New York! 'Since you are married, Herr Kling, you might put a good word in for me with this lady. If you will give me her address, I could always go over with an introduction from you.'" With that, and a wholly unnecessary wish that the reader hadn't been bored, Wilma asks that the reader say a prayer for her husband should his name appear on the entry list for a race somewhere nearby, and the Klings take leave. Presumably, there was another boat ­ or, perhaps, a plane ­ to catch.