One of the great ‘miracles’ of 2017 was meeting retired farmer and soldier Rod Newbolt-Young, from Widecombe.

The biblical reference is not misplaced. It’s fair to say that this remarkable author of a remarkable book is – to coin a hackneyed phrase – ‘lucky to be alive’.

He popped into the Mid-Devon Advertiser just before Christmas clutching a copy of Live For The Day, a breathless catalogue of death-defying scrapes which have doggedly hounded him throughout his precarious existence.

Even now his extreme relationship with mortality continues in the same mode as he defies the ravages of cancer.

He takes all these relentless assaults on him in his stride which, for the record, is helped by deft use of a pair of crutches… de rigueur props for a man of his hazardous life experience.

Rod dismisses any suggestion that he is accident-prone.

‘Nonsense!’ he declares, arguing with vigour that fortune has merely been a reluctant playmate.

His astounding autobiography (Ryelands, £16.99) has more action and drama in its 200 pages than a binge-watch fest of all the James Bond films.

‘I’ve received some good feedback about the book,’ the modest author admits, adding: ‘I’ve sold a number locally.’

By rights this should be a whopping bestseller. Just a quick perusal of the chapter headings–- all 50 of ’em! – gives a clue of the phenomenal incidents which have more than distracted our nerveless narrator over his three-score years and 10.

A random selection includes… machete attack, overboard at night, cliff fall, knife attack, parachuting accident, entombed, the grenade range, Russian roulette, flying with a suicide pilot, farm accidents…

You get the drift. One could argue that anyone nervously disposed might like to take medical advice before committing themselves to the onslaught of Rod’s dramas.

Even the writer’s younger brother – a retired brigadier with nearly 40 years of perilous rough and tumble in the Army – concedes his life has been ‘sheltered’ in comparison.

Rod readily accepts that the number and frequency of his hairy-scary moments do ‘verge on the incredible’.

He singles out the book’s first tale of terror as perhaps the one which brought him frighteningly closer to the his maker than any of the others… the notorious Fastnet sailing race disaster of 1979.

He and fellow crew members on the yacht Charioteer survived the tumultuous attack from the storm-whipped ocean off the southern Irish coast – but the battered boat disappeared under the mountainous waves never to be seen again, an outcome Rod was more than grateful not to be emulate.

As he and his mates were fighting for their dear lives the body of someone less fortunate floated by them on his silent journey to oblivion.

Some 194 boats in a field of 303 failed to cross the finishing line. Fifteen competitors were killed.

Rod’s account of his amazing survival is a sustained piece of dramatic reportage worthy of any gripping page-turner.

The brief sequel to this ripping yarn is equally dramatic and tragic.

There really is no let-up in events happening to and around our guide to glitches great and small.

He says simply: ‘But survive I have done – and am doing.’

Whether the reader has the same stamina for enduring so many harum-scarum tales of woe and wonder is another matter.

Perhaps a chapter a day, if they can manage it, might be a healthier way of getting to the end of the book intact.

It is a bruising and bloody affair and the path to the final chapter is not an easy one. Breathtaking – but not easy.

And that’s just the act of reading them. Again, Rod’s experiences have been nothing short of miraculous.

This review could be 10 times longer than it is – but that would be robbing everyone else of the thrills and spills this brilliant book bashes you with.

It’s all a bit inspirational – and even love finds time to raise its fond head. Inquire within.

Copies can be obtained from the usual outlets, including Amazon and Waterstones in Newton Abbot.

Tireless Rod is now working on a follow-up publication which will take the reader into the equally perilous land of fiction… all of it based on fact.