Bob and Pat share their library, which is finished in Italian plaster and walnut-stained beams.

On June 23, 1967, at the Watkins Glen race track in New York, Bob was guiding a McLaren MARK II Cana at 150 miles an hour into a corner. As he turned the wheel toward the straightaway, the steering arm snapped and he went skyward.

‘I can remember seeing the tops of the trees, and praying on the way down,” he recalls. ‘When I came to, I was in the hospital, and the doctors were telling me I wouldn’t walk again or drive in competition again.’ Today, he prizes the bent racing wheel from car, which the Ford Motor Company sent him later: It’s a talisman of the fragility, and preciousness, of life itself.

Adding to Bob’s automotive books, Pat has acquired a large collection, too, including an edition of the Zohar, the medieval Jewish Kabbalistic commentary on man and God. Here, too, she prizes many books about Leonardo da Vinci, her role model and mentor.

‘Da Vinci’s fascination with flying things, medicine, astrology, religion, architecture and human anatomy and its divine perfection have always inspired me, and I have surrounded myself with these subjects,’ she says.

Photo Mark Susan