SPORT IN LITERATURE

Scottish writer Des Dillon has produced a magical and inventive novel based around the misfortunes of the ailing Albion Rovers football team who find themselves taken over by the spirit of the Busby Babes, killed in a 1958 air disaster. Locker room tension and corrupt management combined with evocative descriptions of the smell and feel of the matches make this an enjoyable Boys Own soccer story.

Journalist Andy Dougan has written an absorbing and gripping account of an historic football match that took place following Hitler's capture of the city of Kiev in the Ukraine. Amongst the incarcerated were members of the 1939 Dynamo Kiev football team who were mobilized into a new team, Start FC. Having won a series of fixtures, their final match was to be against a Luftwaffe team. Andy Dougan reveals the truth behind this legendary encounter and pays tribute to the complex motives and the bravery of the players.

An hilarious blend of comedy, travel and sports writing, Balham to Bollywood recounts the adventures of Chris England who traveled to India to act in a Bollywood epic and ends up running his own cricket team. An unlikely cricket tour diary, England’s story is a cracking yarn that captures the essence and atmosphere of India.
'A hilarious volume' - The Glasgow Herald

Before his resignation in April 2007, Duncan Fletcher had been the most successful England cricket coach of the modern era. In the glorious summer of 2005 Fletcher's management and coaching skills reached their apogee, as England regained the Ashes from Australia for the first time since 1985. Widely acclaimed as the greatest Test series in the history of the game, this five-match contest thrilled the nation with its extraordinary swings of fortune. It was a personal triumph for Fletcher, and the high point of his tenure as England coach. One of the most experienced and senior figures in the game, Fletcher now looks back over his life and career as he ponders his next step. What was it that drove him from a sporty and competitive Rhodesian farming family to the heights of international cricket? What lessons has he drawn from his successful business career in forging a winning team? Full of telling insights and frank assessments of the players and administrators he has had the pleasure and pain of working alongside, Behind the Shades is the riveting and revelatory autobiography of the man who put the pride back into the England cricket team.

An historical novel based upon the true story of Tom Molineaux, a former slave in the United States who won his freedom in a boxing match, then travelled to England, refined his skills, and almost became the first black England champion. The novel has been criticised for using black stereotypes but is significant in that it successfully chronicles an important episode in the history of sport and race relations.

Based on a character who first appeared in the classic football magazine, When Saturday Comes, Life at the Tip is a funny and winning account of the ill-fated Les Bence, manager of the woeful Athletic Whaddon and his haphazard attempts to build a successful football team.

Sunny is Sri Lankan and nearly 15 years old. It is the late 60s, and his father has moved the two of them to Manila, after his mother's death. Sunny decides to start a cricket team with the other Sri Lankans to get the attention of his attractive neighbour. But even when first love goes wrong, his passion for cricket remains, the only connection he has to the home he left behind. Sunny goes on to attend university in London, and when his father dies, he finds himself unable to return to the Philippines. He falls in love, and makes a new life for himself in England. But despite the obvious tranquillity of his life, he feels unmoored, increasingly distanced from his lovely wife and especially from their son, who doesn't share his interest in cricket.

A celebration of the humourous side of cricket as seen through the pen of some of leading literary figures of their day, including J. M. Barrie, Anthony Trollope, P. G. Wodehouse, A. A. Milne and Ben Travers.

A classic of English literature which explores the complexities of the British class system at the beginning of the 20th-century. It is also the moving story of one boy's romantic awakening, a tragic love story and a portrayal of rural life that elegantly demonstrates the significance of cricket within the village hierarchy.

Travelling through four decades of cycling and social history in post-war Europe, Hilton's account of the sport as a cultural phenomenon, the development of the Tour de France, cycling for fun, cycling clubs and the lives of the greats of the cycling world is a remarkable, informed and humourous reminiscence on the world of cycling.