ICON

Since the ‘coming soon’ announcement some months ago, anticipation has been building for Jaguar Land Rover’s largeformat release, subtitled The Official Story of the Series Land Rover and Defender. Now it’s finally available and, if you’ve an appreciation of Britain’s iconic ‘go anywhere’ vehicle, it’s highly unlikely that you will be disappointed.

From the opening pages, which showcase some fantastic photography, you’re in no doubt that this is pitched as a pure celebration of all things Land-rover and, although it is certainly no exhaustive historical account, the book touches on the timeline that stretches from the first 80in of 1948 to the last Defender in 2016.

The first chapter offers an overview of nine epic road trips, but if that’s not enough to get your teeth into then the following section certainly is – 22 pages of sumptuously shot studio photos detailing the cover star: Tim Dines’ 80in, the third production car and one of the vehicles revealed at the 1948 Amsterdam Motor Show.

Some may level criticism at both the price and paucity of text content in favour of photographic material, but we doubt there’s a Landie owner in the land who won’t make space on the shelf for what is bound to become a sought-after publication. MP

£50 Published by Land Rover and available only from its online store: https://shop.landrover.com/uk