Okay, so I’ve fallen behind a bit - it’s almost a third of the way through the year so I should really be writing a post about book 10, whatever that may be!

With the way it’s going, I may end up having to read 10 books in the last week - a bit like doing your homework on the way to school when you were a kiddywinkle.

Anyhoo enough preamble, what about this book.

To be honest, I wasn’t sure what to expect.  I wasn’t a huge, or even small, James Allen fan when he was the lead commentator on ITV over the last few seasons but I had enjoyed his articles on the ITV-F1 website a lot more so I hoped The Edge of Greatness would follow the notion that his writing is better than his talking.

I’ve a bit of a love/hate thing going on with Schumacher as well - I’ve no doubt that he is the best driver I’ve ever seen, and perhaps ever will see.  Early on in his career I wasn’t too fussed whether he won or not, but later on I was rooting for him to continue breaking record after record.  I can’t even explain why I changed my mind, perhaps it’s simply because I could see he was undoubtedly the best and so any time he won it was generally because he deserved to - and even when he didn’t dominate a race, he would still do something amazing to pull off a victory.

So, to the book.  It isn’t a conventional biography, with the timeline jumping about a bit but it’s none the worse for that.  Sometimes when talking about something early on in Schumacher’s career it makes sense to then bring up something which happened much later and I think this actually helps the flow of the book.

Of course, given both the subject matter and the title of the book it’s clear from the outset that the main focus is going to be on the more unsavoury events in his career with the spotlight firmly on his accidents with Hill and Villenueve.  These have been gone over time and time again, but Allen manages to still make it feel fresh.

But for all that, this is still a book by an F1 journalist about the most successful F1 driver of all time - so if you don’t like F1 then I don’t think this will float your boat!  If you are a fan though, whether a diehard one or a more casual observer, you could do a lot worse than to pick this book up and give it a go - those who were critical of James Allen during his stint with ITV may be pleasantly surprised.