Abilio Estévez

Abir Mukherjee is the bestselling author of the award-winning Wyndham &amp; Banerjee series of crime novels set in 1920s India and the British Book Awards Crime Thriller of the Year 2025 Hunted. His books have been translated into sixteen languages and won various awards including the CWA Dagger for best Historical Novel, the Prix du Polar Européen, and the Wilbur Smith Award for Adventure Writing. 
 
 
He also co-hosts the popular Red Hot Chilli Writers podcast which takes a wry look at the world of books, writing, and the creative arts, tackling everything from bestsellers to pop culture. Abir grew up in Scotland and now lives in Surrey with his wife and two sons. 
 
 
Website: abirmukherjee.com Twitter, Threads &amp; Instagram: @radiomukhers Facebook: AuthorAbir

Abir Mukherjee

Abolqasem Ferdowsi

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham L. Newman is a professor at the School of Foreign Service and Government Department at Georgetown University. He is a 2022-2023 Berlin Prize winner and his work has been published in leading outlets like The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Washington Post, Nature, Science, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Harvard Business Review, and Politico.

Abraham Newman

Abraham Verghese

Absolut Vodka

Ad Putter

Ada Moncrieff is the author of Murder Most Festive, Murder at the Theatre Royale and Murder at Maybridge Castle. She lives and works in London.

Ada Moncrieff

Adam Aleksic is a linguist and content creator posting educational videos as the “Etymology Nerd” to an audience of over two million. As a linguistics student at Harvard College, he founded and served as president of the Harvard Undergraduate Linguistics Society. He’s discussed online language on NPR, repeatedly contributed to The Washington Post, and his work has been mentioned in The New York Times, The Economist, and The Guardian. He’s lectured on language and social media at Stanford, Yale, Georgetown, and other top universities, including a TEDx talk at the University of Pennsylvania. Adam is based in New York City, where he spends a lot of time scrolling TikTok for “research.”

Adam Aleksic

Adam Alter is an Associate Professor at New York University's Stern School of Business, and holds an affiliated appointment within the Psychology Department. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Drunk Tank Pink: And Other Unexpected Forces That Shape How We Think, Feel and Behave and has written for The New York Times, New Yorker, Atlantic, Wired, Popular Science and numerous other publications.

Adam Alter

Professor Adam Balen is lead clinician at one of the UK's largest and most successful IVF units at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust. In recognition of his research on fertility and related conditions, he holds a DSc (the highest academic degree in medicine) from the University of Leeds. Adam is internationally renowned, holding roles with the World Health Organisation (WHO), the International Federation of Gyneacology and Obstetrics (FIGO) and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gyneacologists (RCOG). He runs both NHS and private fertility clinics so he understands the issues that arise from both sides and he works closely with fertility patient support organisations across the UK. Adam regularly features in the media on all aspects of reproductive health and lectures widely throughout the world.

Adam Balen

Adam Baron

Adam Bornstein

Adam Brookes grew up in the UK and was a journalist with BBC News for many years. As a foreign correspondent he was based in Indonesia, China and the United States. Along the way he reported from many other countries, including Iraq, Afghanistan and North Korea. He lives in Washington DC.

Adam Brookes

Adam Buxton

Adam Christopher is the New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: Shadow of the Sith and Stranger Things: Darkness on the Edge of Town. He has also written official tie-in novels for the hit CBS television show Elementary and the award-winning Dishonored video game franchise. Co-creator of the twenty-first-century incarnation of Archie Comics superhero The Shield, Adam has also written for the universes of Doctor Who and World of Warcraft, and is a contributor to the internationally bestselling Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View anniversary anthology series and the all-ages Star Wars Adventures comic. Adam’s original novels include Made to Kill and The Burning Dark, among many others, and his debut novel Empire State was both a SciFi Now and Financial Times book of the year.

Adam Christopher

Adam Foulds's most recent books are In the Wolf’s Mouth, The Quickening Maze, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Encore Award and the European Union Prize for Literature, and The Broken Word, which won the Costa Poetry Award and the Somerset Maugham Award. He has recently been awarded the E.M. Forster Award by the American Academy of Arts and Letters and named as one of Granta’s ‘Best of Young British Novelists’.

Adam Foulds

Dr Adam Fox is a highly qualified and respected allergy specialist and consultant paediatric allergist and clinical lead for Allergy at Guy's &amp; St Thomas' Hospitals. The Times recently named him as one of Britain's top 100 children’s doctors. 
 
www.allergyfreebabyandtoddler.com

Adam Fox

Adam Frost

Adam Galinsky is currently the Morris and Alice Kaplan Professor of Ethics and Decision in Management at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He received his PhD from Princeton University in Social Psychology and his B.A. from Harvard University.

Adam Galinsky

Adam Glasser

Adam Goodfellow

Adam Goodwin

Adam Grant is an organizational psychologist at Wharton, where he has been the top-rated professor for seven straight years. His books have sold millions of copies, his TED talks have been viewed more than 30 million times, and he hosts the hit podcast Re:Thinking. His pioneering research on motivation and meaning has enabled people to reach their aspirations and exceed others' expectations. His viral piece on languishing was the most-read New York Times article of 2021 and the most-saved article across platforms. He has been recognized as one of the world's ten most influential management thinkers and Fortune's 40 Under 40, and has received distinguished scientific achievement awards from the American Psychological Association and the National Science Foundation. Grant received his B.A. from Harvard University and his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, and he is a former Junior Olympic springboard diver. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife and their three children.

Adam Grant

Adam and Charlotte met in Zanzibar while working with Voluntary Services Overseas. Upon their return to the UK, Charlotte completed an MA at Oxford Brookes and started her career in publishing. Adam in the meantime became writer-in-residence at the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre before co-founding Storytelling Schools, an international organisation dedicated to training teachers in oracy, literacy and creativity. Adam and Charlotte's first book together was the best-selling and award-winning Spaghetti with the Yeti. Since then, Adam and Charlotte have continued to follow their passion for creating engaging books that inspire interaction and creativity in young readers.

Adam Guillain

ADAM HAMDY is a bestselling author and screenwriter. His most recent novel, The Other Side of Night, was an NPR best book of 2022 and a New York Times best thriller of the year, and has been described as ingenious and deeply moving. He is the author of the Scott Pearce series of modern spy thrillers, Black 13, Red Wolves and White Fire, and the Pendulum trilogy. Keep up to date with his latest books and news at www.adamhamdy.com.

Adam Hamdy

Adam Hart-Davis

Adam Haslett is the author of the story collection You Are Not a Stranger Here and the novels Imagine Me Gone and Union Atlantic. He has twice been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award and his books have been translated into over thirty languages. His journalism on culture and politics has appeared in The Financial Times, Esquire, The New Yorker, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, The Nation, and The Atlantic, among others. He lives in New York City.

Adam Haslett

PublicationStatus

Brand

Format

AgeRange

Series

Imprint

CategoryLabel

Patrick Barclay

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BRITISH SPORTS BOOK AWARDS 
 
Sir Alex Ferguson is the most controversial and compelling figure in football. For many he ranks as the greatest manager of all time. He is certainly the most successful. 
 
It's been more than ten years since Ferguson's Manchester United triumphed over Bayern Munich in the dying seconds of the Champions League final. Since then he has presided over the rise and fall and rise again of José Mourinho; the arrival and departure of the world's best player, Ronaldo; the removal of one English talisman - Beckham - and the irresistible instalment of another - Rooney. Ferguson has been instrumental in making the Premier League the most successful competition in football, and he has endured while the mountains of cash have turned to valleys of debt. 
 
Throughout, award-winning journalist Patrick Barclay has been pitch-side and spoken to all those who know Ferguson best - fellow managers, former players, colleagues and commentators. The result is Football - Bloody Hell!: the definitive work on the game's greatest living legend.

Football - Bloody Hell!

The Biography of Alex Ferguson

Kevin Mitchell

Gangsters have been around boxing for ever. When boxing took hold in Madison Square Garden just after the First World War, a new wave of criminals moved in: the Mob. It was then that Prohibition gave street legitimacy to organised crime right across America; and by the time Joe Louis arrived to breathe excitement through a country ravaged by the Great Depression, the wise guys were firmly entrenched at ringside. Mike Jacobs, the grizzled boss of boxing at the Garden for nearly twenty years, made the Brown Bomber the biggest sports star in the world, and a string of romantic writers ensured this would be remembered as the fight game's golden age. They mingled with underworld heavies along a strip of New York pavement near the Garden known only as Jacobs Beach. 
 
Kevin Mitchell's gripping book is the unsanitised story of those times and that place, of Rat Pack cool and the fading of the Mob's peculiar glamour, brilliantly told through the eyes of the men who were there.

Jacobs Beach

The Mob, the Garden, and the Golden Age of Boxing

Anthony Clavane

This is a book about football. It's about unconditional love for a club, even when it doesn't always seem to love you back. But it is also a book about much more than that. 
 
Anthony Clavane loves Leeds - certainly the football club, but also the city, and the tribes that make it. Now that he is an exile in the South, his frequent pilgrimages to the stadium speak for themselves. But he no less loves the rarely-glimpsed back-streets of his youth; and even has a feel for the long-gone slums where his ancestors once settled. Leeds is his promised land; idealised and unreachable, yet still it defines him. 
 
'Sports writing at its very best' Daily Telegraph

Promised Land

A Northern Love Story

Timothy O'Grady

Weather, hazards, poor coordination, erratic biorhythms, hangovers, an unruly mind and statistical improbability - these are just a few of the obstacles to hitting a pure golf shot. Che Guevara, Alice Cooper, Dennis Hopper, and Tiger Woods have all struggled with the above to a greater or lesser degree. And, since being initiated as a child into the arcane mysteries of the game of golf, Timothy O'Grady too has carried in his mind an obsession with the sport, shrugging off its social unacceptability and embracing its history, its literature and his own private battle with the club.   For O'Grady, the obsession has, at times, been all-consuming and On Golf is structured around a personal history - how his father played and taught him, how the game dominated his teenage years, and how father and son continued to talk manically about the game even as the older man lay fading away in the bed in which he would die. But O'Grady also discusses the rich literature of golf, from Tobias Smollett to P. G. Wodehouse, and tells us of the terrifying and glorious occasion when he got to play a round with Arnold Palmer. On Golf is the work of a great writer and a good golfer. Timothy O'Grady still dreams that he may one day become a truly fine player but in the meantime he has given us a book which beautifully describes his love affair with the game and goes to the root of the obsession that captivates so many.

On Golf

Catrine Clay

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR 
 
How did one man go from Nazi Youth indoctrination to English footballing icon? 
 
Bert Trautmann is a football legend. He is famed as the Manchester City goalkeeper who broke his neck in the 1956 FA Cup final and played on. But his early life was no less extraordinary. He grew up in Nazi Germany, where first he was indoctrinated by the Hitler Youth, before fighting in World War Two in France and on the Eastern Front. 
 
 In 1945 he was captured and sent to a British POW camp where, for the first time, he understood that there could be a better way of life. He embraced England as his new home and before long became an English football hero. This is his story. 
 
 'A gripping story of an unlikely redemption through football' Sunday Times 
 
'He was the best goalkeeper I ever played against. We always said, don't look into the goal when you're trying to score against Bert. Because if you do, he'll see your eyes and read your thoughts.' Bobby Charlton

Trautmann's Journey

From Hitler Youth to FA Cup Legend

Tom English

Shortlised for the 2022 SBA Best Sports Book of the 21st Century prize 
 
The gripping inside story of when an England-Scotland rugby match become more than a game 
 
Murrayfield, the Calcutta Cup, March 1990. England vs. Scotland - winner-takes-all for the Five Nations Grand Slam, the biggest prize in northern hemisphere rugby. 
 
Will Carling's England are the very embodiment of Margaret Thatcher's Britain - snarling, brutish and all-conquering. Scotland are the underdogs - second-class citizens from a land that's become the testing ground for the most unpopular tax in living memory: Thatcher's Poll Tax. In Edinburgh, nationalism is rising high - what happens in the stadium will resound far beyond the pitch. 
 
Told with unprecedented access to key players, coaches and supporters on both sides (Will Carling, Ian McGeechan, Brian Moore and the rest), Tom English has produced a gripping account of a titanic struggle that thrusts the reader right into the heart of the action. Game on. 
 
'A priceless read' Guardian 
'Absolutely outstanding' The Times 
'An epic tale' Daily Telegraph 
'Gripping' Scottish Review of Books

The Grudge

Two Nations, One Match, No Holds Barred

Scotland vs. England, 1990

Laurent Fignon

'Ah, I remember you: you're the guy who lost the Tour de France by eight seconds!' 
'No monsieur, I'm the guy who won the Tour twice. 
 
The international bestselling autobiography of the legendary French cyclist Laurent Fignon 
 
 Two-time winner of the Tour de France in the early eighties, Laurent Fignon became the star for a new generation. In the 1989 tour, he lost out to his American arch-rival, Greg LeMond, by an agonising eight seconds. 
 
 In this revealing account, the former champion spares nobody, not even himself, and pulls back the curtain on what really went on behind the scenes of this epic sport - the friendships, the rivalries, the betrayals, the parties, the girls and, of course, the performance-enhancing drugs. Fignon's story bestrides a golden age in cycling: a time when the headlines spoke of heroes, not doping, and a time when cyclists were afraid of nothing. 
 
‘Sports book of the year: He's ruthlessly honest, about himself and about cycling, and he provides a gripping insight into an unrelenting hard world’ Independent

We Were Young and Carefree

The Autobiography of Laurent Fignon

William Fotheringham

Voted the most popular Italian sportsman of the twentieth century, Fausto Angelo Coppi was the campionissimo - champion of champions. The greatest cyclist of the immediate post-war years, he was the first man to win cycling's great double, the Tour de France and Tour of Italy in the same year - and he did it twice. He achieved mythical status for his crushing solo victories, world titles and world records. But his significance extends far beyond his sport. 
 
Coppi's scandalous divorce and controversial early death convulsed a conservative, staunchly Roman Catholic Italy in the 1950s. At a time when adultery was still illegal, Coppi and his lover were dragged from their bed in the middle of the night, excommunicated and forced to face a clamorous legal battle. The ramifications of this case are still being felt today. 
 
In Fallen Angel, acclaimed cycling biographer, William Fotheringham, tells the tragic story of Coppi's life and death - of how a man who became the symbol of a nation's rebirth after the disasters of war died reviled and heartbroken. Told with insight and intelligence, this is a unique portrait of Italy and Italian sport at a time of tumultuous change.

Fallen Angel

The Passion of Fausto Coppi

The Estate Of Frederick Exley

'Listen, you son of a bitch, life isn't all a goddam football game! You won't always get the girl! Life is rejection and pain and loss...' 
 
A Fan's Notes - the horrible and hilarious account of a long failure. Our narrator is the ultimate unreconstructed male. His primary concerns are alcohol, sex and the New York Giants. But things go very wrong for him - he drinks too much, he's impotent and the Giants start to loose. And so we follow his boozy trail through two failed marriages, many bars and intermittent visits to Avalon Valley - a private home for the mentally ill. Shockingly politically incorrect, terribly self-indulgent but more than redeemed by its unremitting honesty and insight this is the unforgettable story of a man laid bare.

A Fan's Notes

Raphael Honigstein

Wembley, 1966. 1-5, Munich, 2001. Mexico '72 and Italy '90. 
 
Bobby Moore and Franz Beckenbauer, Paul Gascoigne and Jürgen Klinsmann. 
Forty years of hurt, tabloid rabble-rousing and 'Don't mention the war'. 
 
But what do the Germans really think of us? Do they even care? 
 
In Englischer Fussball, respected journalist Raphael Honigstein gives us a German's-eye view of our national game. 
 
Starting with the origin of the modern game in the late nineteenth century, Honigstein traces the development of English football from its public-school origins to the glory years of Ramsey and beyond. Is English football really about manliness, hard work, fair play and a never-say-die attitude? Why is there so little room in our game for individual brilliance? And just why are we so hung up on beating the Germans? 
 
Provocative, incisive and ever topical, Englischer Fussball is a book that explores the difference between how we see ourselves and how the rest of the world sees us. From hooligans to sex scandals, Wayne Rooney to Stanley Matthews, it asks what football can teach us about the English national character. 
 
'Honigstein offers a perspective on England's football and its culture that is stimulating and rather fascinating' Observer

Englischer Fussball

A German's View of Our Beautiful Game

Ian O'Connor

Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer are two of the greatest golfers in history. In fact, it's fair to say that between them - with some help from Gary Player - they created the game as we know it. Their rise inspired and coincided with golf's huge explosion - in participation, in TV coverage, and in commercial terms. 
 
Nicklaus may have reigned supreme on the course, with eighteen major titles to his name, but it was Palmer who was America's favourite star, and the highest earning sportsman in the world. At times, each man loathed and resented the other; ultimately, each came to respsect his rival's dramatic and distinct impact on the game of golf. 
 
Arnie &amp; Jack brilliantly brings to life the story of two men, their rivalry and a whole sport, in a gripping, no-holds-barred account of one of sport's most fascinating pairings.

Arnie & Jack

Palmer, Nicklaus and Golf's Greatest Rivalry

Jeremy Whittle

Even the biggest cycling fan can one day wake up to find that he has lost his faith 
 
 Bad Blood is the story of Jeremy Whittle's journey from unquestioning fan to Tour de France insider and confirmed sceptic. It's about broken friendships and a sport divided; about having to choose sides in the war against doping; about how galloping greed and corporate opportunism have led the Tour de France to the brink of destruction. 
 
Part personal memoir, part devastating exposé of a sport torn apart by drugs and scandal, Bad Blood is a love letter to one man's past, and a warning to cycling's future. 
 
‘Whatever you think about doping, you must read this book ... Well-balanced, considered, compelling’ Rouleur 
 
Shortlisted for the 2008 William Hill Sports Book of the Year

Bad Blood

The Secret Life of the Tour de France

Lawrence Booth

Cricket, Lovely Cricket is a journey around the perennially curious world of cricket, leaving no metaphorical leg-break unturned and peering at the game from every conceivable angle. Here, Lawrence Booth, who had little option but to turn a youthful obsession with the game into a means of paying the mortgage, seeks to consider the questions that crop up on a daily basis but rarely receive a satisfactory answer. What are the players really like? What is the secret of sledging? Why get so worked up about the Ashes? Why all the clichés? And how did India take over the world? 
 
Taking the reader to the heart of a game that seems more capable than any other of bewitching its followers, this is a captivating look at the way cricket has become what it is today - and what, given a fair wind, it might be like in the future.

Cricket, Lovely Cricket?

An Addict's Guide to the World's Most Exasperating Game

Glenn McGrath

From working the land in Narromine to winning cricket's World Cup three times, Glenn McGrath has always faced life with fierce determination and an unerring will to succeed, despite the odds. Now, following his retirement from international cricket, McGrath tells his complete story - on and off the field. 
 
The man known as 'Pigeon' won his baggy green cap in Perth in 1993 and went on to forge a brilliant career, eventually becoming cricket's most successful fast bowler with 563 Test wickets. McGrath entered Ashes folklore in 1997 when he destroyed England by taking 8 for 38 at Lords, and he even scored a Test half-century with the bat. With leg spinner Shane Warne, he formed the most devastating bowling combination in Test history. 
 
Glenn McGrath's most meaningful achievements, however, have been off the field. With his wife, Jane, he established the McGrath Foundation, a major funder for and supporter of breast cancer sufferers. Here, in their own words, the McGraths discuss their battles with the disease and Jane's tragic death. 
 
Line and Strength is the tell-all story of an Australian country boy who took on the world.

Line and Strength

The Complete Story by Glenn McGrath and Daniel Lane

Jon Hotten

The Years of the Locust is a true story of intrigue, paranoia, murder and money set in the shimmering cities of America's South in the 1990s. It's the story of two men who never should have met, and when they did, one killed the other. There are walk-on parts for Don King, George Foreman, the FBI and a fallen NFL hero, yet it's the two central characters - sociopathic door-to-door-sales-king-turned-boxing-promoter Rick 'Elvis' Parker and his loyal, naive and ultimately incorruptible fighter Tim Anderson - that make this story extraordinary and unforgettable. 
 
It would be impossible to invent a man like Rick Parker, a freakishly fat ginger-haired giant who modelled his personal style on Elvis Presley and wanted to become the next Don King. Don himself told Rick how to do it - find a white man who could become the heavyweight champion of the world. Then Rick met Tim Anderson, a handsome, funny former baseball pro - was he the fighter to take Parker all the way? Rick left a trail of fixed fights and violent mayhem all across the South, but his dream stayed out of reach. By the end of his reign of terror Tim would be broke, poisoned and facing the hardest choice of all. And now Tim is doing life without parole in a state prison, and Rick - well, Rick's dead. 
 
By juxtaposing the lives of these two extraordinary men, The Years of the Locust turns a remarkable, riotous true-crime story into a profound examination of chance, choices and remorse - one that's scary, sad and blackly, bleakly funny.

The Years of the Locust

A True Story of Murder, Money and Mayhem in the Last Age of Boxing

Tom Cox

As a teenager, Cox dreamed of sporting immortality. For four years he devoted himself to the game of golf. And then, one day, he walked away. But as he got older, those dreams kept coming back. Perhaps it was turning thirty, perhaps it was having his first hole in one, but he decided it was time to start again, to live the dream for real. 
 
So he switched off his computer, grabbed his checked trouser and headed for the golf course. To turn pro. The Open Championship was only five of the best rounds of his life away, and given a few warm-up tournaments, how hard could it be?

Bring Me the Head of Sergio Garcia

Aidan Smith

July 30, 1966. Bobby Moore is lifting the Jules Rimet trophy, Denis Law is playing golf, and a young boy in Edinburgh is being taught the most important lesson of his life: no matter who England are playing, you support the other lot. If the opposition have a dodgy human rights record, or are cruel to wasps, or can't even be located on a large-format map - too bad. You support the other lot. 
 
Forty years on, and Aidan Smith has done a pretty good job of supporting the other lot. But these days he should be old enough, and ugly enough, to be above petty, playground-formed sporting squabbles. Besides, the World Cup is coming, Scotland haven't made it, and he's about to marry an Englishwoman. Maybe it's a sign. But can a Scotsman ever cheer for 'Ingerland'? 
 
In Union Jock, Aidan Smith investigates the age-old England-Scotland emnity, both on and off the football field. The Scots may have suffered at the hands of the Auld Enemy for centuries - Braveheart, Culloden, Jimmy Hill calling David Narey's goal a "toe-poke" (against Brazil in the 1982 World Cup, top right-hand corner) - but now they're a nation on the rise, with a spanking new parliament to prove it. But what do the fans, players, politicians, and Sassenach invaders really think about their English neighbours? Would supporting England be a denial of their Scottishness? 
 
Join Aidan Smith on his quest to put an end to centuries of not-so-friendly rivalry. That's if the Scots don't get him first. Or the English.

Union Jock

Sleeping with the Auld Enemy

Severiano Ballesteros

Now the subject of a major film. 
 
Once or twice a generation, an athlete transcends his sport - at last, here's Seve Ballesteros in his own words 
 
There are golfers, and there are golfers. And then there's Seve. 
 
Severiano Ballesteros was perhaps the most naturally gifted golfer ever to have walked a fairway. From the moment his brother Manuel gave him his first club he was unstoppable. A few weeks before his seventeenth birthday he turned pro. Five years later he won the Open. A genius had arrived. 
 
For the best part of two decades Seve dominated the golfing landscape. He played shots others could only dream of. With 94 wins as a professional (including 5 majors) he was a phenomenon, an athlete who transcended his sport. 
 
But Seve stood for more than simple excellence. Almost single-handedly, Seve gave European golf credibility; almost single-handedly, he made the Ryder Cup one of the greatest contests in world sport. And when, as captain, he finally lifted the trophy on home soil in 1997, a whole continent rejoiced. His pride and passion have inspired millions, and we have taken him to our hearts. 
 
Here, for the first time, Seve tells his own story. From his humble beginnings right up to the present day, here at last is the man behind the magic in his own words. Seve is utterly entertaining, blazingly charismatic and unique. 
 
Severiano "Seve" Ballesteros Sota was a Spanish professional golfer and a leading sports figure. He won more than 90 international tournaments in an illustrious career. He first caught the attention of the sporting world in 1976, when at the age of 19 he finished second at The Open. He played a leading role in the re-emergence of European golf, helping the European Ryder Cup team to five wins both as a player and captain. He won the World Match Play Championship a record-tying five times. He is generally regarded as the greatest Continental European golfer of all time and won a record 50 times on the European Tour. 
Ballesteros died of brain cancer on 7 May 2011, aged 54.

Seve

The Autobiography

Charles Rangeley-Wilson

Fishing can take you to the heart of a landscape in a way few other forms of travel can match. Whether in the world's most outlandish and awe-inspiring places or just at the end of your road, fishing will introduce you to crabby weather and crabbier locals, moon-phases, rip-tides, floods, droughts, remarkable tales, and of course fantastic slippery beasts. 
 
In The Accidental Angler you'll battle titanic monsters on a tropical atoll and make-believe sharks on the mushy-peas-and-gravy Wash. You'll chase inscrutable grayling through back gardens in Provence, or phantom sea trout in downtown Southampton. And you'll dance in Brazilian carvinals and find secret rivers hidden beneath the streets. 
 
Join Charles Rangeley-Wilson - angler, conservationist, television presenter and traveller - for the trip of a lifetime, on a journey that will make the familiar new, and the strange familiar.

The Accidental Angler

Discover the story of Britain’s ultimate cyclist and his ill-fated race during the 1967 Tour de France, from the bestselling author of Half Man Half Bike 
 
Tom Simpson was an Olympic medallist, world champion and the first Briton to wear the fabled yellow jersey of the Tour de France. He died a tragic early death during the 1967 Tour. A man of contradictions, Simpson was one of the first cyclists to admit to using banned drugs, and was accused of fixing races, yet the dapper 'Major Tom' inspired awe and affection for the obsessive will to win which was ultimately to cost him his life. 
 
 Put Me Back on My Bike revisits the places and people associated with Simpson to produce the definitive story of Britain's greatest ever cyclist. The fully revised and updated edition of William Fotheringham's classic biography features a new foreword and postscript further exploring the truth behind the legend. 
 
‘The best cycling biography ever written' Velo 
 ‘A beautiful explanation of why Simpson's legend still exerts such a powerful hold’ Sunday Times

Put Me Back on My Bike

In Search of Tom Simpson

Paul Kimmage

An eye-opening expose of and a heart-breaking lament for professional cycling 
 
Paul Kimmage's boyhood dreams were of cycling glory: wearing the yellow jersey, cycling the Tour de France, becoming a national hero. He knew it wouldn't come easy, but he was prepared to put in the graft. The dedication paid off – he finished sixth in the World Championships as an amateur and in 1986, he turned professional. 
 
He soon discovered it wasn't about courage, training hours or how much you wanted to win. It was about gruelling defeats, total exhaustion, and drugs - drugs that would allow you to finish the race and start another day. 
 
 Kimmage ultimately left the sport to write this book – profoundly honest and ground-breaking, Rough Ride broke the silence surrounding the issue of drugs in sport, and documents one man’s love for, and struggle with, the complex world of professional cycling. 
 
 ‘A must read for any cyclist’ Cyclist 
WINNER OF WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR

Rough Ride

Behind the Wheel with a Pro Cyclist

Michael Hutchinson

The Hour. It's the only cycling record that matters: one man and his bike against the clock in a quest for pure speed. No teammates, no rivals, no tactics, no gears, no brakes. Just one simple question - in sixty minutes, how far can you go? 
 
Michael Hutchinson had a plan. He was going to add his name to the list of record-holders, cycling's supermen. But how does a man who became a professional athlete by accident achieve sporting immortality? It didn't sound too hard. All he needed was a couple of hand-tooled bike frames, the most expensive wheels money could buy, a support team of crack professionals, a small pot of glue, and a credit card wired to someone else's bank account. Still, getting the glue wasn't a problem... 
 
Michael Hutchinson became a full-time cyclist in 2000 after becoming disillusioned with an academic career. Over the following six years he has won more than twenty national titles, and the gold medal in the Masters' Pursuit World Championships. He is now a writer and journalist (and cyclist) and lives in south London.

The Hour

Sporting immortality the hard way

Gary Imlach

WINNER OF THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 
 
A poignant and moving account of the author’s search for the man his father was and the life he led as a well-known footballer, blending the personal and the historical into an unforgettable story 
 
 Stewart Imlach was an ordinary neighbourhood soccer star of his time. 
 
 A brilliant winger who thrilled the crowd on Saturdays, then worked alongside them in the off-season; who represented Scotland in the 1958 World Cup and never received a cap for his efforts; who was Man of the Match for Nottingham Forest in the 1959 FA Cup Final, and was rewarded with the standard offer - £20 a week, take it or leave it. 
 
 Gary Imlach grew up a privileged insider at Goodison Park when Stewart moved into coaching. He knew the highlights of his father's career by heart. But when his dad died he realised they were all he knew. He began to realise, too, that he'd lost the passion for football that his father had passed down to him. In this book he faces his growing alienation from the game he was born into, as he revisits key periods in his father's career to build up a picture of his football life - and through him a whole era. 
 
‘The most emotionally charged and moving sports book I've ever read’ Daily Mail

My Father And Other Working Class Football Heroes

Somewhere Else is a thousand miles away and right next-door. It's where fly-fishing takes you: a place and state of mind. 
 
In fourteen beautifully crafted stories Charles Rangeley-Wilson takes us around the world, from Arctic Quebec to upland Croatia, from the Scottish islands to the Northern Territories, always journeying into the heart of the landscape to meet ordinary, extraordinary people. Somewhere Else is a book about escaping from what you think you know, to find out how things really are.

Somewhere Else

Bodybuilding is the wildest, wierdest sport in the world, but it's more than just a sport. It's a whole way of life for the supermen who scale its Olympian heights. Muscle is a journey through a land of giants, men for whom life is given meaning by the pursuit of the perfect pec and who worship at the shrine of Schwartzenegger. 
 
Jon Hotten has a 40-inch chest and 12-inch arms. Undaunted, he fights his unpromising genetics to hitch up with the bodybuilding circus, hanging out with the stars and legends, the casualties, gym rats and iron junkies. As his forbidding subjects open up, he discovers a story of unregulated excess, chemical mayhem and hard-won glory, a story for anyone who's ever looked in the mirror and wanted more...

Muscle

A Writer's Trip Through a Sport with No Boundaries

David Conn

Football is at the heart of British culture – yet never has it been in greater turmoil. 
 
Once, football stood for passion, community, honour, even beauty. The game is in danger of losing its lifeblood - and its soul. 
 
 In The Beautiful Game? David Conn, the game's most respected investigative journalist, sets out on a journey through the heart of our national game, exploring how the sport has failed - and who is to blame. This is a book for those who keep the faith, who believe that the sport itself, stripped of the greed and self-interest blighting its organisation, still has values, and can still be beautiful. 
 
‘For a fascinating insight into the causes, and the creators, of the game's ills this is a superbly told tale’ Independent

The Beautiful Game?

Searching for the Soul of Football

Ruy Castro

The World Cup Finals, Sweden 1958. Brazil vs the fearsome USSR. 
 
In the opening three minutes - 'the greatest three minutes in the history of football' - one man wrote himself into the record books. Brazil went on to win the cup, and, in Garrincha, a star was born. 
 
 Garrincha was the unlikeliest of footballers - with a right leg that turned inwards and a left that turned out, but with a ball at his feet he had the poise of an angel. He played for the love of the game, uninterested in money, and ignoring tactical advice. And he was as wild off the pitch as he was mesmerising on it - mischievous, audacious and dripping with sex appeal. 
 
 It was his affair and subsequent marriage to the singer Elza Soares that caught the imagination of a nation - their mouth-watering combination of soccer and samba made them the toast of 1960s Rio. But by the age of forty-nine, Garrincha was dead, destroyed by the excesses that made him so compelling. 
 
‘Funny and moving, zealously researched and lovingly told’ Daily Telegraph

Garrincha

The Triumph and Tragedy of Brazil's Forgotten Footballing Hero

H G Bissinger

In the state of Texas American football is a religion. And nowhere is more fanatical about its football than the small town of Odessa. There, every Friday night from September to November, a bunch of seventeen-year-old kids play their hearts out for the honour of their high school. In front of 20,000 people. 
 
In 1988 H.G. Bissinger spent a season in Odessa discovering just what makes a town pin its hopes on eleven boys on a football field. He lived with the students, coaches and townspeople who dedicate their lives to their team, sharing their joys and triumphs, their pains, injuries and bitter disappointments. He returned with a compassionate but hard-eyed story of a town riven by money, race and class, where a high school can spend more on medical supplies for its athletic program than on its English department. 
 
Friday Night Lights is one of the best books about sport ever written. It is the story of how dreams and reality collide, at once glorious and immensely sad. Because for the 30-odd boys of the Permian Panthers, these days will have been the best of their lives.

Friday Night Lights

A Town, a Team, and a Dream

Ronald Reng

Ronald Reng traces German footballer Lars Leese’s stratospheric rise from computer software salesman to Premiership goalie, and his equally alarming descent 
 
Plucked from obscurity and playing in one of the most important leagues in the world, Leese experienced in real life what thousands of boys - and men - can only dream of: stepping out of the crowd and onto a Premiership pitch. 
 
At the age of 28, German goalkeeper Lars Leese was catapulted from a minor league football field somewhere near Cologne to a small industrial town in the north of England. Something of a culture shock, certainly, but nothing compared to finding himself in goal for Barnsley playing the mighty Liverpool at Anfield in front of over 45,000 spectators. Reng’s narrative is an indispensable antidote to the traditional footballing biography and a unique - and at times shocking - outsider's view of English life. Not since you last read the back pages of the News of the World will you have seen such an accurate picture of life as a Premiership footballer. 
 
‘Eye-opening exposé of life at an English club’ Independent

Keeper of Dreams

One Man's Controversial Story of Life in the English Premiership

Tim Adams

Read a fan's eye view of one of tennis's most notorious stars, and an exploration into the idea of sporting obsession. 
 
The perfect nostalgic treat for any Wimbledon fan. 
 
The greatest sports stars characterise their times. They also help to tell us who we are. John McEnroe, at his best and worst, encapsulated the story of the eighties. His improvised quest for tennis perfection, and his inability to find a way to grow up, dramatised the volatile self-absorption of a generation. His matches were open therapy sessions, and they allowed us all to be armchair shrinks. 
 
 Tim Adams sets out to explore what it might have meant to be John McEnroe during those times, and in his subsequent lives, and to define exactly what it is we want from our sporting heroes: how we require them to play out our own dramas; how the best of them provide an intensity that we can measure our own lives by. Talking to McEnroe, his friends and rivals, and drawing on a range of reference, he presents a book that is both a fan's-eye portrait of the most vivid player ever to pick up a racket, and an original study of the idea of sporting obsession.

On Being John McEnroe

Atlantia

Avalon

BBC Children's Classics

BBC Classics

BBC Earth

BBC Radio’s The Lord of the Rings

BBC TV Soundtracks

BP Animation

Baby Touch

Ballroom Girls

Barnaby Grimes

Be More...

Bear Mountain Rescue Series

Beasts of Prey

The complete boxed collection of Beatrix Potter's beloved Peter Rabbit books

Beatrix Potter Originals

Beautiful Creatures

Bel Dame Apocrypha

Bella Wallis Victorian Mysteries

Belle

Ben & Holly's Little Kingdom

Bergman Brothers

Big Ideas for Little Philosophers

Bill Clinton & James Patterson stand-alone thrillers

Bill Smith / Lydia Chin

Bim Blake

Bindi Babes

Tim and Biscuit, two unlikely friends, always seem to get themselves into difficult situations. From their first meeting in Cliffhanger, where bookish Tim is forced to endure an activities camp, to Buried Alive, where a quiet camping holiday turns out to be full of surprises, there is never a dull moment with these two around.Jaqueline Wilson’s hilarious duo of books catalogues their escapades, triumphs and failures, with a good helping of snacks along the way!

Filters

Category

Publication Date

Format

Series

Imprint

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter