A modern, affordable biography of the 'Flying Mantuan' is a welcome addition to the shelves indeed, although the intense wariness that this reviewer has developed towards anything bearing the name Christopher Hilton meant that the book was initially greeted with considerable trepidation.

This time, though, Hilton has largely come through with the goods. First-hand details of Nuvolari's life are apparently scarce and fragmentary, so rather than deliver an account of his entire life, Hilton has opted to recount the basics and build the rest around the framework of some of the pint-sized Italian's greatest races.

Given the relatively short span of time that separates us from Nuvolari, and the fact that there must still be family members and other contemporaries with memories of him, as well as those a generation down with whom those who were close to Nuvolari may have shared their experiences, it's hard to see why a little more digging would not have helped fill in some of the many gaps in his life story. Perhaps this just isn't that kind of book.

On the other side of the coin, Hilton's determination to tell the truth is both obvious and admirable. Some of Nuvolari's deeds have taken on an increasingly mythological flavour with each re-telling, which makes sorting the real events from their heroic re-creations extremely difficult. That's not to say that Hilton is immune to Nuvolari's mystique – it's a fair bet that this was a major factor in the author's decision to embark upon this project in the first place, and he does rely on it as a mechanism to draw the reader into the story in the opening pages.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, particularly when it is followed up with a near-zealous obsession with presenting an accurate account of what really happened. It helps of course if somebody else has already done all the hard work, which is most apparent when Hilton recounts the infamous 'fixed' 1933 Tripoli Grand Prix.

In this case, the author draws heavily and openly upon the remarkable piece produced for Atlas F1 by Don Capps. It's nice to see Capps, as well as the Nostalgia Forum (one of the great online motor racing history resources) receive some 'mainstream' recognition, and it's hard not to think that there will be many more in the future.

Also worthy of special note was Hilton's treatment of another incident that helped create the Nuvolari legend – the 1930 Mille Miglia, where Nuvolari was said to have pulled a sneaky one on Varzi by switiching off his headlights as he closed in on him in the darkness as the epic race came to an end, only to switch them on again as he swept past his startled rival to victory.

Again, it is easy to be seduced by the legend, however Hilton has taken a number of accounts, evaluated them critically, and reconstructed a scenario which is presented convincingly as being rather closer to reality. This quest for accuracy – something overlooked by a disappointing number of motorsport writers, past and present – is a credit to the author, and is nothing less than Nuvolari himself deserves.

The ubiquitous photo plates include an array of mostly excellent shots interspersed with a few that could probably have been omitted to no great loss. There are no images from Nuvolari's era that depict him or his surrounds during his early years – or even racing a bike – but the author plugs one or two of the gaps with his own shots of such relics as the house in which the racer was born, as it looks today.

'Nuvolari' does have its negative points, the most irritating of which is the authors habit of writing himself into the story at every given opportunity. If you can image taking a guided tour through the Louvre with a guide who stands in front of the Mona Lisa while they are telling you about it, leaving you standing on tip-toes and ducking your head left and right in an effort to see the painting which is partially hidden by their shoulder, then you have some impression of what this book is like. There are times that it seems that every page brings another occasion that makes the reader wish that the author would just shut up about themselves and get on with telling an otherwise intriguing story.

By and large, though, this is a pretty good read. More importantly, in trying hard to give an accurate account of Nuvolari's career, Hilton plugs a hole in racing literature that was created by the inaccuracies inherent in earlier books by the likes of Count Lurani and Alfred Neubauer. If you're a fast reader then you might want to wait for the steep-ish price to come down a bit, because reading 'Nuvolari' is a comparatively quick exercise.