Wisden Sports Writing – serie
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18 produkter
18 produkter
E-bok
PDF, Engelska, 2011114 kr
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There was once a time, not so long ago, where our sporting heroes were treated with veneration. Players were players and their watchers were passive. Heroes lived on pedestals - they weren''t public property. This book explores the many ways this dynamic has changed over the years. From the Barmy Army''s loud but loyal support of the England cricket team to the jeers that greeted our returning footballers after the World Cup, the relationship between athlete and fan is now quite dramatically different. With his usual gentle wit and subtle intelligence, renowned sports writer Patrick Collins records one year spent observing a range of different sports and their many and varied fans. From a county cricket match at Canterbury - a place that resists change - to a corporate box at Wembley - watch them eat! see them drink! - from dog racing to swimming galas, this is a wonderful and humorous look at the world of sports - and the fans who make it all possible.
Häftad, Engelska, 2013
175 kr
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'A captivating and detailed account ... it reads like a thriller, which is exactly the right tone to adopt by author Richard Moore for a story dripping with skulduggery and intrigue ... compelling' The Sunday ExpressThe 1988 Seoul Olympics played host to what has been described by some as the dirtiest race of all time, by others as the greatest. The final of the men's 100 metres at those Olympics is certainly the most infamous in the history of athletics, and more indelibly etched into the consciousness of the sport, the Olympics, and a global audience of millions, than any other athletics event before or since.Ben Johnson's world-record time of 9.79 seconds – as thrilling as it was – was the beginning rather than the end of the story. Following the race, Johnson tested positive, news that generated as many – if not more – shockwaves as his fastest ever run. He was stripped of the title, Lewis was awarded the gold medal, Linford Christie the silver and Calvin Smith the bronze.More than two decades on, the story still hadn't ended. In 1999 Lewis was named Sportsman of the Century by the IOC, and Olympian of the Century by Sports Illustrated. Yet his reputation was damaged by revelations that he too used performance-enhancing drugs, and tested positive prior to the Seoul Olympics. Christie also tested positive in Seoul but his explanation, that the banned substance had been in ginseng tea, was accepted. Smith, now a lecturer in English literature at a Florida university, was the only athlete in the top five whose reputation remains unblemished – the others all tested positive at some stage in their careers.Containing remarkable new revelations, this book uses witness interviews - with Johnson, Lewis and Smith among others - to reconstruct the build-up to the race, the race itself, and the fallout when news of Johnson's positive test broke and he was forced into hiding. It also examines the rivalry of the two favourites going into it, and puts the race in a historical context, examining its continuing relevance on the sport today, where every new record elicits scepticism.
Häftad, Engelska, 2014
227 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
On a Bangalore night in April 2008, cricket and India changed forever. It was the first night of the Indian Premier League – cricket, but not as we knew it. It involved big money, glitz, prancing girls and Bollywood stars. It was not so much sport as tamasha: a great entertainment. The Great Tamasha examines how a game and a country, both regarded as synonymous with infinite patience, managed to produce such an event. James Astill explains how India’s economic surge and cricketing obsession made it the dominant power in world cricket, off the field if rarely on it. He tells how cricket has become the central focus of the world’s second-biggest nation: the place where power and money and celebrity and corruption all meet, to the rapt attention of a billion eyeballs. Astill crosses the subcontinent and, over endless cups of tea, meets the people who make up modern India – from faded princes to back-street bookmakers, slum kids to squillionaires – and sees how cricket shapes their lives and that of their country. Finally, in London he meets Indian cricket’s fallen star, Lalit Modi, whose driving energy helped build this new form of cricket before he was dismissed in disgrace: a story that says much about modern India. The Great Tamasha is a fascinating examination of the most important development in cricket today. A brilliant evocation of an endlessly beguiling country, it is also essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the workings of modern India.Winner of the British Sports Book Awards Cricket Book of the Year 2014.
E-bok
Engelska, 2011114 kr
Läs direkt efter köp
There was once a time, not so long ago, where our sporting heroes were treated with veneration. Players were players and their watchers were passive. Heroes lived on pedestals - they weren''t public property. This book explores the many ways this dynamic has changed over the years. From the Barmy Army''s loud but loyal support of the England cricket team to the jeers that greeted our returning footballers after the World Cup, the relationship between athlete and fan is now quite dramatically different. With his usual gentle wit and subtle intelligence, renowned sports writer Patrick Collins records one year spent observing a range of different sports and their many and varied fans. From a county cricket match at Canterbury - a place that resists change - to a corporate box at Wembley - watch them eat! see them drink! - from dog racing to swimming galas, this is a wonderful and humorous look at the world of sports - and the fans who make it all possible.
E-bok
PDF, Engelska, 2012103 kr
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Television and sport is the ultimate marriage of convenience. The two circled each other warily for a while - sport anxious the sofa-bound might spurn the live product, TV reluctant in a limited channel world to hand over too much screen time to flannelled fools and muddied oafs. But they got together, and stayed together, for the sake of the money, and now you cannot imagine one without the other. They are indivisible, like an old couple sitting in a teashop finishing each other''s sentences, and there is little doubt which is the dominant partner. You have only to think of the recent sports stars who have left their muddy fields to don sequins, grab partners and tango their way across the stage in ultimate Saturday night television style, to see how far the two have come on their journey together.In Sit Down and Cheer Martin Kelner traces the development of this relationship from its humble origins in the 1960 Olympics, by way of the first-ever Match of the Day in 1964, through to the financial impact of Sky, right up to the high-tech gadgetry of our present-day viewing. Insightful and very funny, this is an entertaining exploration of two major national pastimes and not to be missed.
E-bok
Engelska, 2012110 kr
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Television and sport is the ultimate marriage of convenience. The two circled each other warily for a while - sport anxious the sofa-bound might spurn the live product, TV reluctant in a limited channel world to hand over too much screen time to flannelled fools and muddied oafs. But they got together, and stayed together, for the sake of the money, and now you cannot imagine one without the other. They are indivisible, like an old couple sitting in a teashop finishing each other''s sentences, and there is little doubt which is the dominant partner. You have only to think of the recent sports stars who have left their muddy fields to don sequins, grab partners and tango their way across the stage in ultimate Saturday night television style, to see how far the two have come on their journey together.In Sit Down and Cheer Martin Kelner traces the development of this relationship from its humble origins in the 1960 Olympics, by way of the first-ever Match of the Day in 1964, through to the financial impact of Sky, right up to the high-tech gadgetry of our present-day viewing. Insightful and very funny, this is an entertaining exploration of two major national pastimes and not to be missed.
E-bok
PDF, Engelska, 2012183 kr
Läs direkt efter köp
''A captivating and detailed account ... it reads like a thriller, which is exactly the right tone to adopt by author Richard Moore for a story dripping with skulduggery and intrigue ... compelling'' The Sunday ExpressThe 1988 Seoul Olympics played host to what has been described by some as the dirtiest race of all time, by others as the greatest. The final of the men''s 100 metres at those Olympics is certainly the most infamous in the history of athletics, and more indelibly etched into the consciousness of the sport, the Olympics, and a global audience of millions, than any other athletics event before or since.Ben Johnson''s world-record time of 9.79 seconds – as thrilling as it was – was the beginning rather than the end of the story. Following the race, Johnson tested positive, news that generated as many – if not more – shockwaves as his fastest ever run. He was stripped of the title, Lewis was awarded the gold medal, Linford Christie the silver and Calvin Smith the bronze.More than two decades on, the story still hadn''t ended. In 1999 Lewis was named Sportsman of the Century by the IOC, and Olympian of the Century by Sports Illustrated. Yet his reputation was damaged by revelations that he too used performance-enhancing drugs, and tested positive prior to the Seoul Olympics. Christie also tested positive in Seoul but his explanation, that the banned substance had been in ginseng tea, was accepted. Smith, now a lecturer in English literature at a Florida university, was the only athlete in the top five whose reputation remains unblemished – the others all tested positive at some stage in their careers.Containing remarkable new revelations, this book uses witness interviews - with Johnson, Lewis and Smith among others - to reconstruct the build-up to the race, the race itself, and the fallout when news of Johnson''s positive test broke and he was forced into hiding. It also examines the rivalry of the two favourites going into it, and puts the race in a historical context, examining its continuing relevance on the sport today, where every new record elicits scepticism.
184 kr
Läs direkt efter köp
''A captivating and detailed account ... it reads like a thriller, which is exactly the right tone to adopt by author Richard Moore for a story dripping with skulduggery and intrigue ... compelling'' The Sunday ExpressThe 1988 Seoul Olympics played host to what has been described by some as the dirtiest race of all time, by others as the greatest. The final of the men''s 100 metres at those Olympics is certainly the most infamous in the history of athletics, and more indelibly etched into the consciousness of the sport, the Olympics, and a global audience of millions, than any other athletics event before or since.Ben Johnson''s world-record time of 9.79 seconds – as thrilling as it was – was the beginning rather than the end of the story. Following the race, Johnson tested positive, news that generated as many – if not more – shockwaves as his fastest ever run. He was stripped of the title, Lewis was awarded the gold medal, Linford Christie the silver and Calvin Smith the bronze.More than two decades on, the story still hadn''t ended. In 1999 Lewis was named Sportsman of the Century by the IOC, and Olympian of the Century by Sports Illustrated. Yet his reputation was damaged by revelations that he too used performance-enhancing drugs, and tested positive prior to the Seoul Olympics. Christie also tested positive in Seoul but his explanation, that the banned substance had been in ginseng tea, was accepted. Smith, now a lecturer in English literature at a Florida university, was the only athlete in the top five whose reputation remains unblemished – the others all tested positive at some stage in their careers.Containing remarkable new revelations, this book uses witness interviews - with Johnson, Lewis and Smith among others - to reconstruct the build-up to the race, the race itself, and the fallout when news of Johnson''s positive test broke and he was forced into hiding. It also examines the rivalry of the two favourites going into it, and puts the race in a historical context, examining its continuing relevance on the sport today, where every new record elicits scepticism.
E-bok
PDF, Engelska, 2012120 kr
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A truly unique and fascinating look at the changing nature of masculinity and manliness, told through the lens of a series of Yorkshire County Cricket Club player portraits through the ages.George Hirst was a man of his time. His apocryphal quotation "We''ll get ''em in singles"epitomises his no-fuss approach to all matters, and his distate for excess or ostentation. His stiff upper lip was a requisite part of his Edwardian manliness. Fast forward a century or so to Darren Gough''s besequinned victory on Strictly Come Dancing or to Michael Vaughan''s final teary press conference, and the different versions of what it means to be masculine are worlds apart.It is one of the oldest cliches in sports writing to say that sport mirrors life. And yet, in this instance, the world of Yorkshire cricket has so faithfully mirrored the outside world that the cliche is unavoidable. Yorkshire, sobrest of counties, has given us some remarkable characters over the years - Len Hutton, Geoffrey Boycott, and Fred Trueman to name just a few. Through portraits of these and other Yorkshire players, and the values that they shared with their contemporaries, this wonderfully original book maps the contours of a sexual revolution whose tremors are still being felt today.
E-bok
Engelska, 2012120 kr
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A truly unique and fascinating look at the changing nature of masculinity and manliness, told through the lens of a series of Yorkshire County Cricket Club player portraits through the ages.George Hirst was a man of his time. His apocryphal quotation "We''ll get ''em in singles"epitomises his no-fuss approach to all matters, and his distate for excess or ostentation. His stiff upper lip was a requisite part of his Edwardian manliness. Fast forward a century or so to Darren Gough''s besequinned victory on Strictly Come Dancing or to Michael Vaughan''s final teary press conference, and the different versions of what it means to be masculine are worlds apart.It is one of the oldest cliches in sports writing to say that sport mirrors life. And yet, in this instance, the world of Yorkshire cricket has so faithfully mirrored the outside world that the cliche is unavoidable. Yorkshire, sobrest of counties, has given us some remarkable characters over the years - Len Hutton, Geoffrey Boycott, and Fred Trueman to name just a few. Through portraits of these and other Yorkshire players, and the values that they shared with their contemporaries, this wonderfully original book maps the contours of a sexual revolution whose tremors are still being felt today.
E-bok
Engelska, 2013224 kr
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On a Bangalore night in April 2008, cricket and India changed forever. It was the first night of the Indian Premier League – cricket, but not as we knew it. It involved big money, glitz, prancing girls and Bollywood stars. It was not so much sport as tamasha: a great entertainment. The Great Tamasha examines how a game and a country, both regarded as synonymous with infinite patience, managed to produce such an event. James Astill explains how India''s economic surge and cricketing obsession made it the dominant power in world cricket, off the field if rarely on it. He tells how cricket has become the central focus of the world''s second-biggest nation: the place where power and money and celebrity and corruption all meet, to the rapt attention of a billion eyeballs. Astill crosses the subcontinent and, over endless cups of tea, meets the people who make up modern India – from faded princes to back-street bookmakers, slum kids to squillionaires – and sees how cricket shapes their lives and that of their country. Finally, in London he meets Indian cricket''s fallen star, Lalit Modi, whose driving energy helped build this new form of cricket before he was dismissed in disgrace: a story that says much about modern India. The Great Tamasha is a fascinating examination of the most important development in cricket today. A brilliant evocation of an endlessly beguiling country, it is also essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the workings of modern India.
E-bok
Engelska, 2013122 kr
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It was the upset to end all upsets. On 8 April 1967 at Aintree racecourse in Liverpool, a 100-1 outsider in peculiar blinkers sidestepped chaos extraordinary even by the Grand National''s standards and won the world''s toughest steeplechase. The jumps-racing establishment - and Gregory Peck, the Hollywood actor whose much-fancied horse was reduced to the status of an also-ran - took a dim view. But Foinavon, the dogged victor, and Susie, the white nanny goat who accompanied him everywhere, became instant celebrities. Within days, the traffic was being stopped for them in front of Buckingham Palace en route to an audience with the Duchess of Kent. Fan mail arrived addressed to ''Foinavon, England''. According to John Kempton, Foinavon''s trainer, the 1967 race ''reminded everyone that the National was part of our heritage''. Foinavon''s Grand National victory has become as much a part of British sporting folklore as the England football team''s one and only World Cup win the previous year. The race has even spawned its own mythology, with the winner portrayed as a horse so useless that not even its owner or trainer could be bothered to come to Liverpool to see him run. Yet remarkably the real story of how Foinavon emerged from an obscure yard near the ancient Ridgeway to pull off one of the most talked-about victories in horseracing history has never been told. Based on original interviews with scores of people who were at Aintree on that rainswept day, or whose lives were in some way touched by the shock result, this book will use the story of this extraordinary race to explore why the Grand National holds tens of millions of people spellbound, year after year, for ten minutes on a Saturday afternoon in early spring.
E-bok
Engelska, 2015228 kr
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Set against the backdrop of depression-era politics, 1934 was an annus mirabilis for English sport. Within just a few days of each other, Hedley Verity, Henry Cotton and Fred Perry all triumphed in their field. To a sporting audience still groaning through the quagmire left by the Great Depression, greedy for inspiring distractions, these heroic events made for a heady spectacle.England''s Ashes Test victory at Lord''s (later known as Verity''s match) saw Australia seeking revenge after the Bodyline series of 1932-33, but Verity bowled England to a famous innings victory, taking 15 wickets - 14 in one day! That same day, Cotton set out on the first qualifying round of the British Open. He went on to set a new Open record with a game so sparkling the Daily Express called it "the best round of golf ever played". And within a fortnight, Perry had beaten Australia''s Jack Crawford in the Wimbledon final. England had an extraordinary national hatrick.Together, these three contests and these three singular life stories weave a vivid portrait of an England that has faded from view. Half-Time celebrates a time of intense and rapid social and cultural change, a time that was both the last hurrah of the ancien regime and the stirring of something new. And moving through it, famous actors on a grand stage, are three very English heroes.
Häftad, Engelska, 2016
234 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
Set against the backdrop of depression-era politics, 1934 was an annus mirabilis for English sport. Within just a few days of each other, Hedley Verity, Henry Cotton and Fred Perry all triumphed in their field. To a sporting audience still groaning through the quagmire left by the Great Depression, greedy for inspiring distractions, these heroic efforts made for a heady spectacle.England’s Ashes Test victory at Lord’s (later known as Verity’s match) saw Australia seeking revenge after the Bodyline series of 1932–33, but Verity bowled England to a famous innings victory, taking 15 wickets – 14 in one day! That same day, Cotton set out on the first qualifying round of the British Open. He went on to set a new Open record with a game so sparkling the Daily Express called it “the best round of golf ever played”. And within a fortnight, Perry had beaten Australia’s Jack Crawford in the Wimbledon final. England had an extraordinary national hat-trick.Together, these three contests and these three singular life stories weave a vivid portrait of an England that has faded from view. Half-Time celebrates a time of intense and rapid social and cultural change, a time that was both the last hurrah of the ancien regime and the stirring of something new. And moving through it, famous actors on a grand stage, are three very English heroes.
E-bok
Engelska, 2015158 kr
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Sunday Times Sports Book of the Year 2015Sometimes you love a football team not only for their strengths, the splendour of their play and the appealing thrust of their character, but also the haunting possibility that their best hopes may never be fulfilled. This has rarely been demonstrated so vividly as by the Manchester City team who briefly, but unforgettably, illuminated the late sixties. And no one was more caught up in their struggles and their triumphs than James Lawton, a young sportswriter starting out on a career that would take him to all the great events of world sport. Yet still, 50 years after Joe Mercer and Malcolm Allison began to shape the brilliant team, he counts watching their rise to glory as one of the most exciting times of his professional life.Francis Lee, Colin Bell, Mike Summerbee - these players loomed large over the game as they charged at the peaks of English football, and today evoke a period of the sport''s history that seems distant and unknowable, hard to see except through the rose-tinted gloss of nostalgia.Lawton goes back to those heroes, interviewing all the main players and characters who are still alive, and vividly brings to life the story of that City team which with such wonderful panache, and freedom, won the first division title, the FA Cup, the League Cup and the European Cup Winners Cup between 1967 and 1970.This, though, is not just the story of one team, but a broader one of how sport can sometimes so perfectly mirror the exaltation and the despair of the real world, how it carries those who do it, and sometimes even those who merely see it, to moments that will claim a permanent place in their hearts.
E-bok
Engelska, 2016110 kr
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A vibrant and captivating portrait of the summer of 1966 – as a man, a team and a country all teetered on the cusp of momentous change''This joyous book, a memoir of late adolescence laced with social and football history, is also a catalogue of both the untidiness and the limits of change'' Financial Times''Out of Time is a gentle and affectionate portrait of the capital''s gradual awakening to the charm of pop culture at that time.'' EconomistLondon, July 1966. Peter Chapman, a naïve 18-year-old from Islington, is on the brink of adulthood. Everything is changing: having failed his A-levels and recently discovered he will not be fulfilling his dream of becoming a professional footballer at Leyton Orient, he is just about to enter the world of work.The world around him is changing too: Britain is trying to adjust to the beat of the Swinging Sixties – though many ears remain deaf to it, still hoping to re-establish a sense of stability in a time of social, political and cultural flux.And under the watchful gaze of the wider world, England is about to play host to the football World Cup and have one of the most significant sporting successes in its history.Focused around that World Cup victory, Peter Chapman''s wryly evocative memoir Out of Time captures the spirit of that year and paints a vivid portrait of a young man, a football team and a whole country all trying to find their new place in the world.
Häftad, Engelska, 2017
155 kr
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SHORTLISTED FOR THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEARThe story of the greatest long-distance athlete in history – a tale of running, redemption and political exile.In the summer of 1952 Emil Zátopek became the king of the running world with an unprecedented distance treble at the Olympic Games in Helsinki. Together with his wife Dana, who won another gold medal in the javelin, they were the embodiment of sporting romance. Born on the same day, they were champions on the same day too. Yet in 1968 this affable but eccentric Czech soldier was betrayed by his Communist paymasters and cast out into wilderness. Hidden from world view, monitored by the secret police and forced to live in a caravan in mining country, he became the invisible hero. Endurance is the first biography to document the remarkable rise, fall and rehabilitation of a man voted the 'greatest runner of all time' by Runner's World.It is also the story of a golden age of sport played out against a backdrop of Cold War politics and paranoia. From the London Olympics of 1948 to Czech concentration camps, this is an uplifting and harrowing story of survival. As Emil rises to global fame, his old coach is locked up and tortured by StB henchmen. Their diverging paths expose the fickleness of popularity and eventually cross again when Zátopek’s world is torn asunder. All both men can do is endure. Due to extensive access to those involved, including Dana herself, Broadbent has written a vivid history involving blood and guns and a love that survived the cruellest twists of fate. From heady nights at White City to the brave resistance during the Prague Spring, this is a book that plants the son of a carpenter at the very centre of a revolution. Whether talking to his rivals on the track or Red Army troops as tanks roll into Prague, Zátopek's humanity shines through and carries all.
E-bok
Engelska, 2016158 kr
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Shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year"A runner must run with dreams in his heart." Emil Zatopek.In the summer of 1952 Emil Zatopek became the king of the running world with an unprecedented distance treble at the Olympic Games in Helsinki. Together with his wife Dana, who won another gold medal in the javelin, they were the embodiment of sporting romance. Born on the same day, they were champions on the same day too. Yet in 1968 this affable but eccentric Czech solider was betrayed by his Communist paymasters and cast out into wilderness. Hidden from world view, monitored by the secret police and forced to live in a caravan in mining country, he became the invisible hero. ''Endurance'' is the first biography to document the remarkable rise, fall and rehabilitation of a man voted the ''greatest runner of all time'' by ''Runner''s World'' in 2013. It is also the story of a golden age of sport played out against a backdrop of Cold War politics and paranoia. From the London Olympics of 1948 to Czech concentration camps, this is an uplifting and harrowing story of survival. As Emil rises to global fame, his old coach is locked up and tortured by StB henchmen. Their diverging paths expose the fickleness of popularity and eventually cross again when Zatopek''s world is torn asunder. All both men can do is endure. The running world of this era is brought to life by dramatic accounts of Zatopek''s great triumphs, manifold records and a rich collection of characters vying to dethrone him. In Britain the sharp-tongued Gordon Pirie falls foul of the media as he becomes obsessed with Zatopek and adopts increasingly-masochistic methods; mild-mannered marathon champion Jim Peters begins a quest that would make “women weep and grown men lose their lunch”. In France Alain Mimoun crawls from the bloody carnage of his war-time exploits to overcome racial snubs and become known as Zatopek''s Shadow; and in the Soviet Union, the tragic figure of Vladimir Kuts is moulded into a brutal running machine at huge cost. Only Zatopek manages to bridge this East-West divide as a savage power struggle is fought in both the Olympic arena and in the corridors of power. Due to extensive access to those involved, including Dana herself, award-winning Times author Rick Broadbent has written a vivid history involving blood and guns and a love that sustained the cruellest twists of fate. From heady nights at White City to the brave resistance during the Prague Spring, this is a book that plants the son of a carpenter at the very centre of a revolution. Whether talking to his rivals on the track or Red Army troops as tanks roll into Prague, Zatopek''s humanity shines through and carries all. With traces of ''Chariots of Fire'' and Laura Hillenbrand''s ''Unbroken'', Endurance is both a wonderful love story and a landmark tale of hope and strength in the face of crushing opposition."It''s at the borders of pain and suffering that the men are separated from the boys." Emil Zatopek