It will come as no surprise to anyone that Jeremy Clarkson loves machines.  But it's not just any old bucket of bolts, cogs and bearings that ring his bell.  He's scoured the length and breadth of the land, plunged into oceans and taken to the skies in search of those rare machines with that elusive certain something.  Along the way he's discovered - 'the safest place to be in the event of nuclear war', 'who would win if Superman, James Bond and The Terminator had a fight', 'the stupidest person he's ever met.', 'what an old Cornish institution called Arthur has to do with 0898 chat lines' and last but by no means least 'how Jean Claude Van Damme might get eaten by a lion'...

In I Know You Got Soul, Jeremy Clarkson tells the stories of the geniuses, innovators and crackpots who put the ghost in the machine.  From Brunel's SS Great Britain to the Spitfire and from the woeful - but inspiring - Graf Zeppelin to Han Solo's Millennium Falcon, they were built by people who love them - and we can't help but love them in return.

Read a collection of Clarkson book extracts and quotes from Jeremy Clarkson’s latest titles.

GT40

It was quite a con. I’d managed to convince the

producers of ‘old’ Top Gear that we should film a

feature about fast Fords through the ages.

The suits nodded sagely as their new-boy

presenter outlined his treatment. We would have

a look at cars such as the Cortina 1600E and

the Escort RS2000, which would bring a sense of

teary nostalgia to the piece, and then we’d look

at the new Fiesta turbo for the ‘yoof ’ audience.

‘Everyone likes a fast Ford,’ I argued, and they

agreed, giving me the green light to set it up.

I’d given them the sort of marketing speak

that TV types love, but actually there was only

one reason I wanted to look at souped-up Fords

past and present: because it’d mean I’d achieve a

dream. I’d get to drive the fastest Ford of them all

– the GT40.

The day arrived and I went through the

motions of being excited at the XR3s and the

Consul GTs. They’d all been brought along by

proud owners who were almost priapic at the

notion of having their cars on television, so it

would have been churlish to have pointed out that

they were merely extras, a bit of padding leading

up to the great event.

I’d loved the GT40 since I was six. At that time

Ferraris were so exotic and so alien that there

seemed little point in worrying about them. I was

living in Doncaster, so I was never going to even

see one for heaven’s sake. Whereas Fords were

different. I mean, my dad had one of those.

So when I heard that a Ford was going to

Le Mans to take on these exotic alien spaceships

from Italy I could sense, even then, that David

was loading his sling in readiness for the battle

with Goliath. What I didn’t know then is that the

GT40 had been born out of spite.

In the early sixties Ford had been on the verge

of buying Ferrari but at the last minute, worried

that his beloved race team would be drowned by

big-company bureaucracy, Enzo had pulled out of

the deal. Henry Ford was so livid at the public

rebuttal that he ordered his enormous empire to

build a car that would go to Le Mans and make

Ferrari look like a team of part-time amateurs.

For more information please contact Clare Pollock on 020 7010 3354 / clare.pollock@uk.penguingroup.com