James has been collecting watches for forty years and writing about them for almost as long. His next book, 'Rolex Legend', is published by Octopus in the UK on September 25 and by Simon & Schuster in the US on November 11. His recent pronouncement that quartz timekeeping was the most important horological advance of the 20th Century has seen him ostracised from almost all polite watch circles. But still he persists.