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Peter Grimsdale has worked in TV on a wide range of programmes, from The Adam & Joe Show to Crimewatch and Big Brother and Dispatches. His first novels Perfect Night and Just Watch Me are thrillers inspired by his BBC assignments to Sri Lanka and secret filming in Communist Albania.
But his latest book is non-fiction. High Performance – When Britain Ruled the Roads springs from a lifelong passion for cars. ‘I didn’t want to write a car book just for enthusiasts – I wanted to tell a true story about a band of brilliant, rebellious folk who happen to design cars, one that which the wider public might not have come across before, a piece of real social history which one way or another has touched everyone.
Early in his TV career Peter worked on a big BBC2 history series about British industry called ‘All Our Working Lives.’ On the film about the car industry he interviewed most of the key people who had steered it through World War Two and after. ‘At the time people were very miserable about how badly things had gone with British Leyland. But that tale of woe obscured a much more positive story of world-beating innovation and competitive success. People like Mini creator Alec Issigonis and William Lyons, who founded Jaguar and also styled his own cars, they rank alongside Lennon and Jagger or Conran and Quant for their impact on the look and feel of British everyday culture. John Cooper and Lotus founder Colin Chapman, they were real rebels who tore up the rules of how racing cars were made and it is thanks to what they started that Britain is still the Silicon Valley of motorsport engineering.’
Peter is married to author Stephanie Calman and lives in South London.
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