It's been almost disconcerting, then, to see the kind of attention that has been lavished upon this book since its launch during the week of the Australian Grand Prix. Walk into any bookshop, and you'll more than likely find it displayed with the kind of prominence normally accorded to the latest literary offering from a celebrity chef. Walk past a more specialised shop, and there are 20 copies arranged artfully in the window. Open a weekend paper, or a general sports magazine, and somebody has reviewed it (apparently without actually reading much of it, but coverage is coverage). It's quite possible that interest in Brabham has been rekindled amongst the non-fanatical general populace to some extent by Webber's presence in F1, given how long it had been since there was an Aussie on the grid. Whatever the case, the book's timing was just about perfect, and if it helps rebuild a general awareness of F1 in these parts, then all the better.

And now to the book itself. The brains trust behind this book has opted for the image-laden, coffee-table format that has become increasingly popular over the past few years. Visually it works a treat ­ the presentation is great, and the photographs are all shown off to great effect. All the same, I had a nagging feeling that I would have preferred a more conventional book with more space allocated to text. It's a tough call, because there really is some great material scattered throughout the pages, but one just gets the sense that a career like Brabham's could easily have leant itself to a lot more words, particularly in his fabulously matter-of-fact delivery. This is obviously a matter of preference rather than a criticism of the book though, and there's every chance that I could be in the minority with this one.

Nye and Brabham take a strictly chronological journey through what Jack's been up to over the past 78 years, with a couple of nice diversions to take a closer look at some of the cars that he utilised at key points during his career. There are plenty of anecdotes and details that were new to this particular reader, although, as always, there was just as much fun to be had in reading between the lines. For instance, upon reading Brabham's account of his poor judgement in selling the Bristol-engined 'RedeX Special' that he was racing in Australia to buy Peter Whitehead's two-litre F2 Cooper-Alta, it's hard to tell whether he genuinely misread the standard of equipment that was racing in England, or whether Whitehead simply zeroed in on Brabham's naivety as a means of offloading an unwanted car to someone who didn't know any better.

A more amusing example, particularly to one who earns a living as a member of the motorsport press corps, comes from Brabham's recollection of the day when his Cooper famously ran out of fuel on the last lap while running third, prompting Jack to get out and push the car across the finish line. According to Brabham, the car sputtered to a halt at Tabac, which, by his reckoning, was about 800 yards (75 metres) from the finish line. An excerpt from Gregor Grant's Autosport report a couple of pages later, however, refers to Brabham "pushing his crippled car nearly a mile to the finish"! What the hell, it's still a good story.

There's little fault to find with this book, other than a series of typos and punctuation errors that should have been searched and exterminated prior to publication. Better-informed souls than me have also reported a few factual errors in areas like photo captions too, and while I didn't pick any up myself, it's something you might want to keep in mind if you plan to rely on this book for anything more serious than recreational reading.

All that aside, this is a well-written, well-told, and generally well-executed book that does justice to Brabham's contribution to motorsport in Australia and Formula One in general. Jack spins a good yarn, his memories are boosted with some priceless photos, and the whole thing is presented with all the trimmings. The review copy was a British edition which, for some reason, was released with a different, and in my opinion nicer, cover to the Australian one. Still, it's what's inside that counts, and in that regard, there is little here that will disappoint.