"Even before I wrote the first words of the narrative, I was being warned by my journalistic colleagues that I was attempting the impossible," writes Alan Henry in the introduction to his latest book, an annotated list of his all-time top 100 F1 drivers.
Impossible, and also rather pointless.
Lists like these are too heavily steeped in the bias of their author to be of any real use to anyone other than as a conversation point, and even then, racing fans have been arguing about the relative merits of individual drivers for years without needing a book to help them.
And of course reviews, like top 100 lists, are entirely subjective. So the fact that lists and rankings bore me senseless means that this particular book was on the back foot before I even turned to the first page. No apologies for that, but I figured I should make that point early so that you can keep it in mind as you read on.