With over 1000 numb-thumbed official club members world-wide, the Scalextric set still has an ardent following some 50 or so years after it was first introduced ­ remarkable, considering the battering its sales levels must have taken over the past two decades, particularly since the dawning of the Playstation Era.

It's probably a fair bet that every racing fan over 30 either owned or had occasional access to a Scalextric set at some point during their childhood, and the sight of one of those little models with the frayed wire brushes dangling from the undertray can still trigger nostalgia by the bucketload.

Rod Green has tried to tap into that part of you that never really grew up with this amazingly (and almost disturbingly) thorough account of the history of all things Scalextric. As someone who actually didn't have a lot to do with this stuff as a kid, this book was more of an interesting glimpse of someone else's obsession than an opportunity to tap into some lost part of my childhood, but it's a credit to Green's efforts that he wrote the thing in such a way that it would even appeal to a Scaltextic infidel such as myself.

Green's account is comprehensive, but he never loses sight of the fact that there is something inherently ridiculous about model car racing, and keeps his tongue planted firmly in his cheek right from the start. Finding the right balance between being informative and being entertaining is not easy, but this book is a good example of how rewarding it can be when the author nails it. It helps, of course, that he has some really interesting material to work with. As interesting as it was to read that the fundamentals of the tracks and cars have changed so little over the last 50 years that you could quite easily use a model from the 1950s on a modern track (or vice-versa), it was even more intriguing to learn that technological developments in the cars would give the newer examples an advantage in acceleration and handling.

Also fascinating were the accounts of the various experiments that the manufacturer made in the quest for the perfect Scalextric machine. Most examples are rear-wheel-drive, but front-wheel-drive and even four-wheel-drive examples have all been available at one time or another.

Scalextric models always aimed to imitate whatever was popular in real racing, so it should come as no surprise that the general history of the models themselves is very closely tied to the history of motorsport in general. (Aside from the fact that, for practical reasons, Scalextric models tended to be one or two years behind their real-life counterparts).

From a historical perspective though, this can turn up some surprises. I, probably arrogantly, never expected to learn anything about real motorsport in this book, but there were a few little gems that were new to me. I'd never known, for example, that Mercedes once built a rotary-powered Sports Car. (Scalextric responded with a model of it, but in the end the real-life one never saw a racetrack in anger).

This is obviously a book of select appeal, but those who are of the inclination will no doubt enjoy it very much indeed. At one point, the Scalextric phenomenon was big enough to warrant the existence of shops devoted exclusively to servicing the needs of the living-room racers, and prestigious enough to carry the endorsement of the likes of Jim Clark (along with an expression of his regret that he hadn't had the opportunity to hone his skills with a set during his own childhood).