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Автор Ричард Хаммонд

Table of Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter 1 - PREPARING FOR THE NORTH POLE

Chapter 2 - THE EARLY YEARS OF AN ADRENALIN JUNKIE

Chapter 3 - FROM LOCAL RADIO TO TOP GEAR

Chapter 4 - WHAT A JOB!

Chapter 5 - THE JET CAR - JUST ANOTHER DAY AT THE OFFICE

Chapter 6 - 20 SEPTEMBER 2006

Chapter 7 - MINDY’S STORY

Chapter 8 - LEEDS GENERAL INFIRMARY

Chapter 9 - HE IS NOT GOING TO DIE

Chapter 10 - HELLO, DARLING

Chapter 11 - A WAITING GAME

Chapter 12 - THE MOVE TO BRISTOL

Chapter 13 - DID YOU KNOW SWANS MATE FOR LIFE?

Chapter 14 - ESCAPE TO SCOTLAND

Chapter 15 - THE COTTAGE IN THE HIGHLANDS

Chapter 16 - GOING HOME

Acknowledgements

Richard Hammond was born in Birmingham in 1969. After Solihull School he studied photography and television production at art college. He worked for various radio stations including York, Cumbria, Newcastle, Lancashire and Leeds before moving to television. After stints on Sky’s Men and Motors, Motor Week and Better Cars, he joined the BBC Top Gear team in 2002. His other television work includes presenting four series of Brainiac: Science Abuse for Sky One; Petrolheads, as a team captain; Time Commanders for BBC2; and as the host of Richard Hammond’s 5 O’Clock Show for ITV1. He also presented The Gunpowder Plot: Exploding the Legend, Should I Worry About and Richard Hammond and the Holy Grail for BBC1, and Crufts Dog Show in 2005. He writes a weekly column for the Daily Mirror.

On 20 September 2006, he was critically injured in a car crash while filming for Top Gear at an airfield near York.

He made a remarkable recovery and still lives in Gloucestershire with his wife Mindy and their two daughters, Izzy and Willow, four horses, five dogs, three cats, a duck called Slim, several motorcycles, a very old tractor and a large collection of cars.

Mindy Hammond was born in Cheltenham and, when she wasn’t doing paper rounds to pay for her riding lessons, she went to the High School for Girls, Gloucester. Moving to London she worked in various offices, which paid for more riding lessons and fed the two big dogs with which she shared her small London flat. At night she wrote novels (still unpublished) and exercised too much. She met Richard in 1995 and together they moved to her home town, where she worked in graduate training. Following the birth of their two daughters she now divides her time between them, a menagerie of pets and livestock and managing Richard’s increasing workload.

On The Edge

RICHARD HAMMOND

Orion

A Weidenfeld & Nicolson ebook

A PHOENIX PAPERBACK

First published in Great Britain in 2007

by Weidenfeld & Nicolson

This paperback edition published in 2008

by Phoenix

an imprint of Orion Books Ltd,

Orion House, 5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane

London, WC2H 9EA

An Hachette Livre UK company

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19 (bottom), 24 (top); BBC Motion Gallery: 14, 15 (all);

BBC Photo Library: 12 (top), 13 (top and the next three clockwise), 24