Evelyn Waugh was born in Hampstead in 1903 and educated at Hertford College, Oxford. In 1928 he published his first novel, Decline and Fall, which was soon followed by Vile Bodies (1930), Black Mischief (1932), A Handful of Dust (1934) and Scoop (1938). During these years he also travelled extensively and converted to Catholicism. In 1939 Waugh was commissioned in the Royal Marines and later transferred to the Royal Horse Guards, experiences which informed his Sword of Honour trilogy (1952-61). His most famous novel, Brideshead Revisited (1945), was written while on leave from the army. Waugh died in 1966.

Evelyn Waugh

Sylvia Waugh

John Evelyn

Evelyn Juers

Evelyn Prentis

Evelyn Cosgrave is a maths teacher and novelist. She lives in Limerick with her husband and two daughters, Dharma and Maya.

Evelyn Cosgrave

Andy Day is one of the best-known stars of preschool television. Andy is the star of multiple children's programmes, most notably his Andy's Adventures, which span from dinosaurs, safari, aquatic, and global, and he is excited to be currently filming brand new adventures, which are going to be dinoriffic! Alongside this he is also the star of 'Andy and the Band' which features Andy's real-life pop band Andy and the Odd Socks, who have played hundreds of live shows, and released over three albums. Andy won a BAFTA for his performance in ‘As You Like It at Shakespeare's Globe’. Andy is also the author of the bestselling Dino Dad young fiction series, illustrated by Steven Lenton, and his first picture book, Dylan the Dino Boy Saves Christmas, illustrated by Alex Patrick, will be published in October 2025. Instagram: @andyday81 | X: @AndyDayTV

Andy Day

Andre Hue

Andy Webb worked as a reporter for BBC Television for more than 15 years, appearing daily as a front-of-camera reporter, first on BBC News then as a reporter and presenter on primetime shows including the BBC’sWatchdog, before embarking on a career as an award-winning director of documentary films. It was his journalism over a 15-year period which first revealed the truth behind the infamous BBC Panorama interview with Princess Diana and so exposed the greatest scandal in the history of the BBC. Since breaking the story in 2020, Andy Webb has been invited to write on the story for a range of leading publications, including the Times, Sunday Times, Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and Sunday Telegraph, and has also been interviewed many times on television, radio and podcasts both in the UK and overseas. Andy is married, with four children, and lives in West London.

Andy Webb

Andy Weir built a two-decade career as a software engineer until the success of his first published novel, The Martian, allowed him to live out his dream of writing full-time. He is a lifelong space nerd and a devoted hobbyist of such subjects as relativistic physics, orbital mechanics, and the history of manned spaceflight. He also mixes a mean cocktail. He lives in California.

Andy Weir

Andy Watt, a graduate of Warwickshire School of Art has spent the last two decades illustrating columns, articles, and editorial pieces for The Guardian, The Times and The Independent. His work has featured in many other magazines in the U.K and USA. He has illustrated several books, worked on advertising campaigns, and created character designs animated on television. 
 
Andy has an irrational fear of restaurants, but has twice eaten in Jamie Oliver's restaurant ‘Fifteen' in Cornwall which he describes as 'very nice’. Thank you Jamie, please don't take offence at my silly drawing.

Andy Watt

Andy Bull

Andy Cave

Andy King is a Lecturer in History at the University of Southampton. Among his many historical interests are the studies of castles, military culture and Anglo-Scottish relations in the late medieval period.

Andy King

ANDY HALL grew up in the shadow of Denali. He is the former editor and publisher of Alaska magazine. He lives in Chugiak, Alaska.

Andy Hall

Andy Lane

Ivo Andric was born in 1892 in Travnik, Bosnia of Croat parents and grew up alongside Orthodox Christians, Moslems and Roman Catholics in Višegrad, the town on the banks of the Drina where his book is set. Until 1941 he served as a Yugoslav diplomat, then, placed under house arrest in Belgrade by the occupying Germans, Andric turned to writing. In 1961 he was awarded the Noble prize for literature. He died in 1975.

Ivo Andric

LJ Andrews is a USA Today bestselling author of fantasy romance. She mystically brings to life worlds of dark Nordic and Viking myths bound by conflicts that bring together impassioned heroes and heroines. In her non-author moments, she is courageously corralling her four children to the myriad of life activities that involves, along with spending time with her favorite hero, her husband. Add two high maintenance dogs and a sassy conure to the mix and that sums it up. She thrives spending time in the Rocky Mountains where she lives in Utah.

LJ Andrews

From the day he was found in a carrier bag on the steps of Guy's Hospital in London, Andy McNab has led an extraordinary life. 
 
As a teenage delinquent, Andy McNab kicked against society. As a young soldier he waged war against the IRA in the streets and fields of South Armagh. As a member of 22 SAS he was at the centre of covert operations for nine years – on five continents. During the Gulf War he commanded Bravo Two Zero, a patrol that, in the words of his commanding officer, 'will remain in regimental history for ever'. Awarded both the Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM) and Military Medal (MM) during his military career, McNab was the British Army's most highly decorated serving soldier when he finally left the SAS. 
 
Since then Andy McNab has become one of the world’s best-selling writers, drawing on his insider knowledge and experience. As well as several non-fiction bestsellers including Bravo Two Zero, the biggest selling British work of military history, he is the author of the best-selling Nick Stone and Tom Buckingham thrillers. He has also written a number of books for children. 
 
Besides his writing work, he lectures to security and intelligence agencies in both the USA and UK, works in the film industry advising Hollywood on everything from covert procedure to training civilian actors to act like soldiers. He continues to be a spokesperson and fundraiser for both military and literacy charities.

Andy McNab

Andre Sólo is a researcher, and co-founder and editor-in-chief for Highly Sensitive Refuge. He has co-authored a number of scientific papers and his writing has appeared in Psychology Today, The Huffington Post and Quiet Revolution. He has been interviewed by The Telegraph, Vogue and the BBC. Andre is based in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Andre Sólo

Andrew Fox

Andre Gide

Andy Neill

Andy Clark is a Professor of Cognitive Philosophy at the University of Sussex, and at Macquarie University, Australia. He is the author of six books including Supersizing the Mind, Natural-Born Cyborgs and Surfing Uncertainty. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the British Academy, and is an occasional Academic Consultant for Google, UK.

Andy Clark

André Gide

Andy Goram

Andy Hixon lives in Sheffield. He works with clay, photography, digital media and animation.

Andy Hixon

Andy Sloan

Andy Riley

Mark Andrew

PublicationStatus

Brand

Format

AgeRange

Series

Imprint

CategoryLabel

William Skidelsky

A story of tennis, obsession and Roger Federer for tennis fans and the general reader alike. 
 
For much of the past decade, William Skidelsky has not been able to stop thinking about Roger Federer, the greatest and most graceful tennis player of all time. A devotion has been all-consuming. 
 
 
In Federer and Me, Skidelsky asks what it is about the Swiss star that transfixes him, and countless others. He dissects the wonders of his forehand, reflects on his rivalry with Nadal, revels in his victories and relives his most crushing defeats. 
 
 
But this is more than just a book about Federer. In charting his obsession, Skidelsky explores the evolution of modern tennis, the role of beauty in sport and the psychology of fandom, weaving his own past into the story. 
 
 
Thought-provoking and beautifully written, Federer and Me is a frank, funny and touching account of one fan's life. 
 
‘A splendid deconstruction of Federer’s technique’ Sunday Times

Federer and Me

A Story of Obsession

George Plimpton

From the author of Paper Lion 
 
Following his turn as a Detroit Lions rookie in Paper Lion, George Plimpton returns to the field of American football and focuses on the careers of his Lions teammates, Alex ‘Mad Duck’ Karras and John ‘the Bear’ Gordy. What he uncovers is a fond tribute to the values and follies of this brutal, but captivating game. 
 
Paper Lion was the quintessential look at a football team behind the scenes and its companion, Mad Ducks and Bears, offers an astute exploration into the fascinating lives, thoughts and motivations of the players at home, in the locker room, and on the field.

Mad Ducks and Bears

Football Revisited

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

Sid Lowe

‘A history of modern Spain told through one of world football's most intense rivalries’ Independent 
 
‘Sports Book of the Year’ Sunday Times 
 
It’s Messi vs Ronaldo, it’s Catalonia vs Castilla. It’s the nation against the state, freedom fighters vs Franco’s fascists. It’s majestic goals and mesmerising skills, red cards and bench brawls. It’s the best two teams on the planet going face to face and toe to toe. 
 
It’s more than a game. It’s a war. 
It’s Barcelona vs Real Madrid. 
 
 Only, it’s not that simple. From the wounds left by the civil war to the teams’ recent global domination, historian and expert on Spanish football, Sid Lowe lifts the lid on sport’s greatest rivalry. Lowe has spoken to the biggest names and the forgotten heroes who defined their clubs. Men like Alfredo Di Stéfano and Johan Cruyff as well as the only survivor of the most politically charged game in history, the Barcelona striker who knocked Madrid out of the European Cup for the first time ever, and the president who celebrated his club’s defining moment by taking a midnight dip in the Thames. 
 
 By exploring the history, politics, culture, economics and language, while never forgetting the drama on the pitch, Lowe demonstrates the symbiotic nature of the relationship between these two football giants. In doing so he reveals the human story behind this explosive rivalry.

Fear and Loathing in La Liga

Barcelona vs Real Madrid

King ADZ

Anyone who’s ever seen or attended the PDC World Darts Championships knows that darts is no ordinary sport. Where else would you find world-class superstars, in the midst of a championship match, cultivating tomorrow’s banging hangover? Or two separate organisations, with a bitter historical rivalry, taking potshots at each other in a bid to secure players, fans and an all-important TV broadcast contract? 
 
And then there’s the fans… Darts fans are unlike any other fans in world sport. They drink the most, they wear the silliest costumes, they sing the loudest and yet they can arguably see the least live action. They feel an immense pride and ownership for the game – its theirs, and they couldn’t care less about the sneers from the mainstream. 
 
Join King ADZ as he dives headfirst into this tempestuous world, meeting former legends, future stars, dominant Internationals, the owners, the referees and of course the fans. Darts may be a simple game to many, but to most it’s absolute mayhem.

Fear and Loathing on the Oche

A Gonzo Journey Through the World of Championship Darts (Shortlisted for the 2018 William Hill Sports Book of the Year)

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

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

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

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

Updated with a new chapter on Klopp's emotional final season at Liverpool 
 
Jürgen Klopp was confirmed as manager of Liverpool FC in October 2015 to a rapturous reception. His super-sized personality and all-or-nothing style of football and management made him the perfect choice to pump up the volume at Anfield and lift Liverpool out of a slump. 
 
Fans and club officials were delighted to get the coach they'd long admired from afar and eager to see the impact he would have on the club and the Premier League. 
 
Klopp is the manager to turn players into winners. He's authentic, approachable and funny, charming media and fans alike. He's also merciless and exceptionally driven, his quick temper bubbling away barely under the surface. Klopp's pitch-side passion has enthralled fans, leading to 2019's triumphant Champions League win and culminating in 2020 Premier League victory 
 
With exclusive access to Klopp's friends, family, colleagues and players, Raphael Honigstein goes behind-the-scenes at Liverpool to tell the definitive story of Klopp's career and how he brought Liverpool to victory.

Klopp: Bring the Noise

Professional cycling is a rich, dynamic and often controversial sport that lends itself to great writing. Some of the most famous and illustrious races were founded by newspapermen and The Cycling Anthology continues this tradition by bringing together the best in the business. 
 
Volume Two is a Tour de France special edition and features original and exclusive pieces by leading cycling writers. ITV reporter Ned Boulting looks at how the Tour made it to our living rooms and into our hearts; pro rider Daniel Lloyd lifts the lid on actually riding a Tour in 'A Domestique's Tale'; Jeremy Whittle examines why, despite drug scandal and infamy, the Tour still intoxicates us; and many more. 
 
Between them, they’ve covered hundreds of Tours de France and written dozens of excellent books and some have even ridden the Tour. Here, their work is showcased together.

The Cycling Anthology

Volume Two (2/5)

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

Max Leonard

Why do road cyclists go to the mountains? Many books tell you where the mountains are, or how long and how high. None of them ask ‘Why?’ 
 
After all, cycling up a mountain is hard – so hard that, to many non-cyclists, it can seem absurd. But, for some, climbing a mountain gracefully (and beating your competitors up the slope) represents the pinnacle of cycling achievement. The mountains are where legends are forged and cycling’s greats make their names. 
 
Why are Europe’s mountain ranges professional cycling’s Wembley Stadium or its Colosseum? Why do amateurs also make a pilgrimage to these high, remote roads and what do we see and feel when we do? 
Why are the roads there in the first place? 
 
Higher Calling explores the central place of mountains in the folklore of road cycling. Blending adventure and travel writing with the rich narrative of pro racing, Max Leonard takes the reader from the battles that created the Alpine roads to the shepherds tending their flocks on the peaks, and to a Grand Tour climax on the ‘highest road in Europe’. And he tells stories of courage and sacrifice, war and love, obsession and elephants along the way.

Higher Calling

Road Cycling’s Obsession with the Mountains

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

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

Derek Lundy

'One of the best books ever written about sailing' 
Time 
 
27,000 miles, three and a half to five months alone at sea, chilling casualty rates, the unrelenting strain of handling 60-foot boats day and night, the absolute certainty of weather and waves that could destroy them. 
 
On 3 November 1996 sixteen sailors set out from the Bay of Biscay to embark on the Vendee Globe - a single-handed yacht race through the world's most treacherous and isolated seas. 
 
Of the sixteen starters only six completed the course, six others withdrew or were disqualified, three were plucked from sinking boats and one disappeared without trace. 
 
This is a book about the sea: how we are dawn to it and how it repels us and about why these men and women risk everything to embark on such a perilous journey. 
 
TWENTIETH ANNIVESARY EDITION, WITH A NEW FOREWORD FROM THE AUTHOR.

The Godforsaken Sea

Gabriele Marcotti

Alberto Polverosi

Leicester City's Premier League victory was the 5,000-1 triumph that delighted the world. 
 
But how did Claudio Ranieri pull off one of the greatest achievements in sport? 
 
 This is the inside story of the rise and rise of the butcher’s son from Rome, whose hard work, passion for the game and ability to learn from his mistakes have earned him the respect of players, fans and owners worldwide. 
 
 Gabriele Marcotti and Alberto Polverosi have known Claudio Ranieri since his early days as a professional footballer. They have closely followed his successes and his failures as he navigated the often topsy-turvy world of football and developed as a player and manager. 
 
 Hail, Claudio! takes an in-depth look into what sets Ranieri apart as a manager, into precisely how the Premier League was won, and what went wrong following that golden season.

Hail, Claudio!

The Manager Behind the Miracle

The Man, the Manager, the Miracle

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

Professional cycling is a rich, dynamic and often controversial sport that lends itself to great writing. Some of the most famous and illustrious races were founded by newspapermen and The Cycling Anthology continues this tradition by bringing together the best in the business. 
 
Volume Four features original and exclusive pieces by leading cycling writers. William Fotheringham remembers the journalist who was instrumental in bringing road-racing to a British audience; Ellis Bacon looks beyond Queen to the link between bikes and beats; Richard Moore finds out what happened to that ‘little punk’ (Lance Armstrong’s words), Iban Mayo, and asks if he really did become a long-distance lorry driver; Daniel Friebe re-examines the ups and downs of Marco Pantani; Tom Southam explains what it’s like not to ride the Tour de France; and much more. 
 
Between them, these writers have covered hundreds of Tours de France and written dozens of excellent books and some have even ridden the Tour. Here, their work is showcased together.

Volume Four (4/5)

Tim Moore

‘Bill Bryson on two wheels’ Independent 
 
Self-confessed loafer Tim Moore, seduced by the speed and glamour of the biggest annual sporting event in the world, sets out to cycle the Tour de France. All 3,630km of it. 
 
A few weeks before the actual Tour de France, British writer Tim Moore sets out to cycle the course and offers a laugh-out-loud funny and highly entertaining account of how the great ride would feel when embarked on by an amateur. Racing old men on butchers' bikes and being chased by cows, Moore soon resorts to standard race tactics - cheating and drugs - in a hilarious and moving tale of true adventure.

French Revolutions

Cycling the Tour de France

Dominic Calder-Smith

In the late 1980s heavyweight boxing was ruled by one man - Mike Tyson. No one could touch him, it seemed, but nonetheless a generation of fighters tried. From 1986 to 1989, Mitch Green, Reggie Gross, Marvis Frazier, Pinklon Thomas, Tony Tucker and Carl Williams all attempted to bring Tyson to his knees. They all failed. 
 
Everyone knows the story of Tyson's decline and fall - the manchild who seemed poised to become one of the greatest boxers in history is now a disgraced relic - but what happened to the men he defeated during his irrepressible prime? 
 
In The Long Round, Dominic Calder-Smith talks to these men nearly twenty years on - the Baptist minister, the drugs counsellor, the security guard at Ground Zero, the convicted assassin and many of their contemporaries - tracing their lives from their upbringings and years of promise to their encounters with Tyson and the present day. 
 
The Long Round explores, openly and honestly, the pain they felt in defeat and their subsequent search for self-respect, their problems with drugs and relationships, their legal woes and financial mismanagements. Some of these men have forged new lives outside of boxing, others struggle to do so, a few even harbour impossible hopes of one last shot at the title. 
 
The Long Round is the story of the fight game - a story of unfulfilled dreams and turbulent lives, of letting boxing go and making a fresh start. It is the story of what happens to fighting men when they move away from the spotlight of the prize ring and have to survive the game of life - the longest round of all.

The Long Round

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

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

Mark Whitaker

In 1928 two extraordinary Englishmen competed in an unprecedented event - a transcontinental road race across America that required them to run an average of 40 miles for 80 consecutive days. 
 
Despite being separated by class, education and age, Peter Gavuzzi and Arthur Newton became close friends and formed a successful business partnership as endurance athletes. They raced in 500-mile relays, in 24-hour events, in snowshoes and against horses; and they became the stars of a craze for endurance events that swept across depression-era North America and the most famous long-distance runners in the world. 
 
However, history has forgotten these two men, and in Running for Their Lives - in a story peopled with remarkable characters, unimaginable feats and tragic twists of fate - they only now receive the recognition they so richly deserve.

Running For Their Lives

The Extraordinary Story of Britain’s Greatest Ever Distance Runners

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

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

'Bill Bryson on two wheels' Independent 
 
Scaling a new peak of rash over-ambition, Tim Moore tackles the 9,000km route of the old Iron Curtain on a tiny-wheeled, two-geared East German shopping bike. 
 
Asking for trouble and getting it, he sets off at the Arctic winter's brutal height, bullying his plucky MIFA 900 through the endless and massively sub-zero desolation of snowbound Finland. 
 
Haunted throughout the journey by the border detritus of watchtowers and rusted razor wire, Moore reflects on the curdling of the Communist dream, and the memories of a Cold War generation reared on the fear of apocalypse - at a time of ratcheting East-West tension. 
 
After three months, 20 countries and a 58-degree jaunt up the centigrade scale, man and bike finally wobble up to a Black Sea beach in Bulgaria, older and wiser, but mainly older.

The Cyclist Who Went Out in the Cold

Adventures Along the Iron Curtain Trail

David Rensin

There will never be another surfer like Miki 'Da Cat' Dora. For twenty years the dashing and enigmatic dark prince of California surfing dominated the Malibu waves and his peers' imaginations, blazing a trail that would inspire generations to come. But when the sport exploded into the mainstream and surfing changed for ever, Dora's paradise was lost. 
 
Outraged at gridlocked swells and a scene that had grown ever more commodified, Dora eventually fled Malibu, seeking empty waves - and anonymity - beyond America. He'd also run afoul of the law, and he led the authorities on a seven-year chase around the globe. Yet, Dora would never give up searching for the spirit of the Malibu he'd lost. Wherever he made his home - New Zealand, South Africa, France - he personified the rebel heart of surfing and became a legend in his own time. 
 
This brilliant biography, based on interviews with more than three hundred people who knew Dora, finally uncovers the truth about surfing's most seductive and complicated icon.

All For A Few Perfect Waves

The Audacious Life and Legend of Rebel Surfer Miki Dora

In the mid-1960s, George Plimpton talked his way into the Detroit Lions’ pre-season training camp and in doing so set the bar for participatory sports journalism. With his characteristic wit, Plimpton recounts his experience of a month practising and living with the team – getting to know the pressures and tensions rookies confront, the hijinks, taking behind the scenes snaps and capturing a host of American football rites and rituals. 
 
Plimpton might not have made it as a quarterback, but fifty years after its first publication, Paper Lion remains one of the most insightful and entertaining classics of sports literature.

Paper Lion

Confessions of a last-string quarterback

Rob Smyth

1980s Rio de Janeiro. 
 
There’s only one king in this city and he’s got the mullet, swagger and fake ID to prove it. 
 
Introducing Carlos Henrique Raposo, known to all as KAISER. 
 
This guy’s got more front than Copacabana beach. He’s the most loveable of rogues with the most common of dreams: to become a professional footballer. And he isn’t about to let trivial details like talent and achievement stand in his way. . . not when he has so many other ways to get what he wants. 
 
In one of the most remarkable football stories ever told, Kaiser graduates from abandoned slumdog to star striker, dressing-room fixer, superstar party host and inexhaustible lover. 
 
And all without kicking a ball. 
 
He’s not just the king… he’s the Kaiser.

Kaiser

The Greatest Footballer Never To Play Football

Meg and Mog

Ebb and Flo

Lucy and Tom

Ink and Iron

Topsy and Tim

Tuck and Tina

And Other Lies

Pizza and Taco

Emma and James

Sarah and Duck

Chaos and Flame

The Lost and Found

Jack and Millie

Anders Knutas

Charlie and Lola

From the bestselling novel I'm Travelling Alone, two dynamic characters are born. 
Police investigators Holger Munch and Mia Krüger work together to solve the most complex crimes in Oslo, catching serial killers before they strike again but their personal lives are not simple either. As people, they could not be more different but as they battle their own demons their unlikely pairing make Munch and Krüger the best kind of classic detective duo.

Munch and Krüger

Lizzie and Lucky

George and Flora

Gods and Warriors

Faith, Hope and Glory

Wizards and Robots

Noughts and Crosses

Malorie Blackman's ground-breaking, award winning series charts the lives and loves of generations as it takes on race and equality with breathtaking drama and heart wrenching sadness. Set in an alternate reality, where the inferior Noughts live as second class citizens in a world run by Crosses, the four books explore the violent politics of a unstable world, and the ordinary lives caught up in in its terror. Beginning with Noughts and Crosses - and the romance of Seph and Callum - and ending with Double Cross, it is a gripping sequence, and an important, relevant story for our time.

Noughts And Crosses

The Knight and Her Emperor

Swallows And Amazons

Key Words with Peter and Jane

Harry and the Dinosaurs

Peter Rabbit Slide-and-Seek

The Snowman flies again . . . In the middle of winter, a little boy's Snowman and Snowdog come to life and take him on a breathtaking and magical adventure.

Showing results for: ‘Evelyn Waugh’

Filters

Category

Publication Date

Format

Series

Imprint

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter