The temptation, when reflecting upon someone like Hunt, is to resort to cliche – I've already had to stop myself from writing 'larger than life' a couple of times. It would be all too easy to say the sport has never been the same since his passing, but frankly, that wouldn't be true. But he certainly didn't go without making his mark, both as a driver and, somewhat ironically considering his early relationship with certain sections of the press, as a media personality.

The transition from archetypal playboy racing driver to respectable media identity was not a smooth one. Murray Walker related his response to the news that Hunt would join him in the BBC commentary box during an interview last year:

"I fiercely resented the advent of James Hunt, partly because I felt that I was doing a satisfactory job (on my own), and partly because I was worried that they were going to replace me with him... However with experience, I know that the BBC Head of Sport Jonathan Martin's decision was absolutely right. Absolutely right. So with hindsight, I very much prefer working with somebody else, provided you can do it. I mean, provided that the two of you are prepared to make the sacrifices, the concessions to the other to enable the other chap to make a contribution.

"Which was something that I found difficult with James Hunt initially, because I am an enthusiastic gasbag and I was wanting to dominate the whole thing. I wasn't trying to dominate the whole thing so that I could push James out, I was just full of words which I wanted to get out and didn't want to let the other bloke get in. And there was a lot of friction over that. And also there were aspects of James that I did not respect, but eventually, we learned to accommodate each other.

"And although I was at the delivery end rather than the receiving end, so I don't really know, I'm told that that chemistry in the box was extremely good, and that the result from the viewers point of view was very entertaining."

Indeed it was, and it established a format that was continued with equally great success when Martin Brundle was later enlisted to fill Hunt's shoes. Ten years down the track, Hunt's presence is still felt. His reputation – reputations, really – is as strong as it ever was. He had a hand in the careers of such names as Mika Hakkinen. He played a major part in shaping the way that images from Grands Prix are interpreted and explained to English-speaking viewers around the world today. And he was the subject of what is rightly considered to be one of the very best driver biographies produced in the past ten years – a book that, fittingly, has just been re-issued in paperback.

I don't know if there is any such thing as the 'perfect biography', but if there's not, then this – and the earlier work from the same author which explored the life of Gilles Villeneuve (which has also been re-released) – comes close. It is honest, respectful without being reverential, revealing without being sensational, and gigantically readable. 'James Hunt' is a perfect example of what an author can achieve if they take the time to actually understand their subject, rather than just collate a lot of names and dates and string them together in a narrative.

I'm not aware of the nature of the relationship that existed between Hunt and Donaldson when the 1976 World Champion was alive, but I would be willing to place a substantial bet that the author felt that he knew Hunt very deeply by the time his work was done. This is clear for no reason other than the fact that even a reader who never met Hunt, and is only coming to know him third (or fourth) hand and across a gap of a decade, finishes the book with a sense of knowing something of him as a person. And this is something that precious few biographies manage to achieve on any significant scale.

The content, then, is flawless, although the book seems to have fared considerably less well from a typesetting perspective. Quite a few glitches have found their way into print, although I'm not sure whether they exist in the original hardback or are unique to this edition.

But these errors are little more than an irritation, and detract nothing from the enjoyment of an outstanding biography. The enormous popularity of this book means that a lot of you out there will already have read it, and to a large extent I'm probably preaching to the converted. But a nine-year gap since the original release, coupled with a more affordable paperback format, should see this book given a new lease of life by another generation of race fans.

Meanwhile, it may be of interest to some readers to learn that William F Nolan's 'Phil Hill: Yankee Champion' has been reissued in hardback by American publisher Brown Fox Books. The same company has also recently released a new edition of 'Barney Oldfield: The Life and Times of America's Legendary Speed King'. Both titles are slated for review on Atlas F1 in the near future, so watch this space...