Between 1999, when he made his international debut, and his retirement earlier this year, there was no greater player in world rugby than Brian O'Driscoll.

Now, at the end of his amazing career - in which he set the all-time record for international caps, and which culminated in fairy-tale fashion with Ireland's victory in the 2014 Six Nations championship - he tells his own story: from childhood and school to unprecedented success for club and country and four Lions tours.

Along the way, he has been tested - by personal loss, off-the-field pressures and career-threatening injuries. The Test is a book about how he took on those challenges - how a world-class talent developed a world-class work ethic and temperament. As he lost his youthful pace, O'Driscoll reinvented himself as a player and reveled the remarkable character and drive behind the glittering gifts. In the latter years of his career, he put in sequence of gladiatorial performances that etched themselves into the minds of every rugby fans an indelibly as the legendary early tries in Paris and Brisbane.

The Test is packed with insights into O'Driscoll's game, his mentality, and his coaches and team-mates with Leinster, Ireland and the Lions. At the same time, it is the self-portrait of a complicated human being forging his own identity in the public eye.

Honest, gritty and thoughtful, and full of vivid stories from a life in and out of rugby, The Test is not just an essential sports book. It is an essential book about family, friends, hard work, courage and imagination.