Michael Symmons Roberts’s fourth book of poetry, Corpus, was the winner of the 2004 Whitbread Poetry Award, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize, and the Griffin International Prize. His sixth collection, Drysalter, was the winner of both the Forward Prize and the Costa Poetry Prize in 2013. He collaborated with Paul Farley on Edgelands (Cape/Vintage) and will do so again in The Deaths of the Poets (Cape, 2017). He has also worked many times with the composer James MacMillan. He has published two novels, and is Professor of Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Michael Symmons Roberts

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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

Nige Tassell

In these days of oligarch owners, superstar managers and players on sky-high wages, the tide is turning towards the lower reaches of the pyramid as fans search for football with a soul. 
 
Plucky underdogs or perennial underachievers, your local non-league team offers hope, drama or at least a Saturday afternoon ritual that's been going for decades. Nige Tassell spends a season in the non-league world. He meets the raffle-ticket seller who wants her ashes scattered in the centre-circle. The envelope salesman who discovered a future England international. The ex-pros still playing with undiluted passion on Sunday mornings. He spends time at clubs looking for promotion to the Football League, clubs just aiming to get eleven players on a pitch every week, and everything in between. 
 
One thing unites them: they all inhabit the heartland of the beautiful game. 
 
'The Bottom Corner is a wonderful journey through life in the lower reaches of the football pyramid. A fascinating tale of a very different world of football from that of the overpaid stars of the television age' Barry Davies

The Bottom Corner

Hope, Glory and Non-League Football

A Season with the Dreamers of Non-League Football

George Plimpton

From the author of Paper Lion 
 
It began as a fun filled stunt and came to a deeply hellish, nearly humiliating end. George Plimpton had the chance to answer every baseball fan’s question: could I strike out a major league star? Out of My League chronicles what happened next as his inspired idea – to get on the mound and pitch a few innings to the All-Stars of the American and National Leagues – got seriously out of hand. 
 
The original foray into participatory journalism that started it all, Out of my League announced George Plimpton as a giant of sports journalism, able to penetrate deep into the very spirit of sport, with his characteristic wit, charm and grace.

Out of my League

An Amateur's Ordeal in Professional Baseball

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 Five is an eclectic mix of stories old and new: 
 
As World War One is commemorated acros the globe, Brendan Gallagher looks at cycling's war heroes and the role the bicycle played in WWI. 
 
Jeremy Whittle goes in search of panache - why you don't always have to be a winner to be a winner in the public's eyes. 
 
Francois Thomazeau examines how the Tour de France became the international event it is today. 
 
The 2014 Tour de France is relived in the form of poetry, by Ellis Bacon. 
 
Lionel Birnie tells the story behind the Linda McCartney cycling team, the great British team that could have been. 
 
Joey McLoughlin was a shining star of the British cycling scene in the 1980s and '90s - Andy McGrath finds out what happened to him. 
 
Edward Pickering returns to one of cycling's great Pyrenean climbs - Superbagneres. 
 
As Matt Beaudin finds out, the Tour de France is a treat for the senses - albeit a loud one. 
 
Matt McGeehan sends a postcard from the 2014 World Track Championships in Colombia. 
 
And Daniel Friebe introduces us to Jean Francois Naquet-Radiguet: Tour de France pioneer.

The Cycling Anthology

Volume Five (5/5)

Ned Boulting

Join Ned Boulting as he reports on his dozen-th Tour de France, an event in which blokes do amazing things on bikes, and, we’re oft told, the biggest annual sporting event in the world. 
 
101 Damnations is a chance to relive the 2014 race, stage for stage, fall after fall, tantrum by tantrum; just the good bits mind, without all the aerial shots of castles. Or sunflowers. (Though it does wax lyrical about some stunning Alpine scenery . . . and, with the race starting in Yorkshire, even some stunning scenery not far from Bradford). 
 
From Leeds to Paris (how often do you say that?), Ned details the minutiae of his encounters with the likes of Vincenzo Nibali, David Millar, Chris Froome, Chris Boardman (or ‘Broadman’ as some would have it), Marcel Kittel, Mrs Cavendish (Mark’s wife), Peter Sagan and the rest. Their endeavours, achievements, humour and occasional rancour, sit alongside his own decade-long quest for the ideal end-of-race T-shirt. 
 
Ned weaves together the interesting, amusing and unheralded threads of the race itself, and reflects on his own perennial struggle to get round, get on and get by. 101 Damnations encapsulates all that is incredible – and incredibly ordinary – about the greatest race on earth.

101 Damnations

Dispatches from the 101st Tour de France

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 Three features original and exclusive pieces by leading cycling writers. Ned Boulting goes behind the scenes at the 2013 Tour de France to get to know the second British winner in two years, Chris Froome; Richard Moore tells the story of Marianne Martin, winner of the first women's Tour de France; Lionel Birnie recounts the story of the Tour of Britian through the prism of the 2013 edition; Jeremy Whittle assess how the aftermath of Lance Armstrong's sensational confession affected Team Sky; 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.

Volume Three (3/5)

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.

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