Product Description

Richard Hammond is one of our most in-demand and best-loved television presenters. On September 20, 2006, he suffered a serious brain injury following a high-speed car crash, and the nation held its breath. On the Edge is his compelling account of life before and after the accident and an honest description of his year of recovery, full of drama and incident. It is also, perhaps, his explanation of why, as a married man and father of two young daughters, he was prepared to risk all by strapping himself to the front of a jet engine with the power of eleven Formula One cars. A daredevil and a petrolhead long before his association with Top Gear, Richard tells the story of his life as an adrenalin junkie, from the small boy showing off with ridiculous stunts on his bicycle to the adolescent with a near-obsessive attraction to speed and the smell of petrol. After a series of jobs in local radio, he graduated to television and eventually to Top Gear, one of the world's most popular shows, upgrading his car with each step up the ladder. His insights into the personalities, the camaraderie and, of course, the stunts for which Top Gear has become famous make compulsive reading. It was whilst filming for Top Gear, driving a jet-powered dragster at speeds over 300mph, that a tyre burst and the car left the track and rolled over, burying him in the earth. He was airlifted to hospital and hovered near death for several days. His wife Mindy tells the story of the anxious hours and days of watching and waiting until he finally emerged from his coma. In an extraordinarily powerful piece of writing, she and Richard then piece together the stages of his recovery as his shattered mind slowly reformed, leaving him sometimes lucid and plausible, sometimes confused and angry, and often exhausted. The final chapter recounts his return home and his triumphant reappearance in front of the cameras.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3839 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-20
• Released on: 2007-09-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 310 pages

About the Author
Richard Hammond is internationally famous for co-presenting Top Gear over the last 4 years with Jeremy Clarkson; he also presented Brainiac: Science Abuse on Sky 1, Should I Worry About...? on BBC 1 and Time Commanders on BBC 2. His Richard Hammond's 5 O'Clock Show was shown every weekday on ITV1 during January and February 2006, and he is a team captain on the BBC2 quiz show, Petrolheads. He writes a weekly column in The Daily Mirror. His crash whilst filming for Top Gear in September 2006 made him a household name.

Customer Reviews

A top man
I found this to be an endearing story, I'm unashamedly a huge Top Gear fan so came at this book with a slightly biased perspective. I was immediately struck by Hammond's utter honesty and no BS style of writing. I loved his pre-Top Gear stories and was moved to tears with his account of the accident and subsequent recovery process. Well worth a read.

Great read
really enjoyed this account of a fascinating individual. His sheer guts and determination is matched only by that of his wife who clearly supported him through the most difficult period of his life. It brings 'the hamster' into the heart of the reader.
Fran B

Less Mindy, more Hammond please
I didn't manage to finish this book. It goes on and on and on. I like Richard Hammond and I am :

a) Glad he survived the accident
b) Happy he has such a close loving family.

But the book is just dull. The Hammond passages read as he speaks but the Mindy chapters (and there are lots) really do go on and on. And on. And on some more.

The book feels like a short story padded out to 300 pages.