Dan Kieran – författare

What is it about an engine roaring into life that makes grown men go weak at the knees? This is a book about machines and the men who love them. Some of these men are quite odd. Having always been a mechanaphobe himself, living in the slow lane, Dan Kieran is on a mission to discover the allure of machines and man''s need for speed. Follow Dan as he climbs aboard a penny-farthing for a jaunt around west London, drives a steam train through the ''alps'', joins the pit lane crew of Mitsubishi for the Britcar 24-hour race at Silverstone, discovers the link between Lawrence of Arabia and the ''wall of death'', meets tank (yes, tank) collectors and the men behind ''digger ballet'', learns to fly in the shadow of Douglas Bader and, along the way, wrestles with Aristotle, Jeremy Clarkson, Plato, Hunter S. Thompson and, mostly, himself.Join Dan as he makes a journey of discovery into another world, the happy and quirky world of the Great British potterer and machine enthusiast. Could he even be tempted to stay there?

The genuinely rough guide to Britain is back. Ten years after it first lifted the concrete slab in the garden of England, Crap Towns returns to dish the dirt on the latest planning disasters, urban blight and posh blighters disfiguring our nation. ''My friends and I once spent an evening in Thetford. Some people threw a cucumber at us.'' ''Southampton: the only place in the UK I''ve ever seen someone get on a bus and nonchalantly spark up a crack pipe.'' ''Bacup long claimed to have the shortest street in Britain - Elgin Street - but recently lost the title to Ebeneezer Place, an even shorter street in Wick, to the fury of locals, who complained that the Scottish rival was only ''a corner''.''