The Last Bell

‘Boxing’s grim appeal is revisited by one of its finest chroniclers, alongside a more personal story of loss and grief. Drawn back into the fight game by Tyson Fury’s redemption story, McRae takes us ringside to some thrilling bouts. It’s full of tender insight, and thoroughly encapsulates the current state of the hurt business’ 

'You finish this powerful and poignant book with renewed admiration for the courage of many of the boxers, while being contemptuous of the extravagant circus that surrounds them'

'Characteristically riveting . . . results in an unusual and fascinating level of access'

‘As with the sport itself, boxing writing is about so much more than physical combat – it’s about the dark drama of life and death in their totality. That Donald McRae understands this implicitly makes him one of the very best writers working today. I’ll read anything he turns his hand to’  

‘Don McRae has spent fifty years in thrall to the fight game. The Last Bell is at once a moving memoir and McRae's swansong as a boxing writer – a fine, vivid, and searching tribute to a sport than can be as lethal as it is uplifting’ 

‘The Last Bell is heart-pounding and enraging, and yet somehow tender, too, full of the grace and wisdom that comes from decades of observing and reflecting on boxing (and sport, competition, spectacle, in general). Reading about Patrick Day’s devastating final bout, I was pacing my office. Thrilling and raw, this is sport writing at its best, but also much more than that. McRae crafts an urgent and unforgettable meditation on risk, loss, and our enduring hunger to find meaning in struggle: a subject that captivates and brings together readers and writers of all kinds’ 

‘Nobody writes about boxing like Don McRae. But with The Last Bell he has written a book that moves beyond just boxing and grapples instead with what it truly means to fight.  It is a book about knowing when to bite down and keep swinging, about knowing when to throw in the towel, a book about loss and defeat, and how we might, in the final reckoning, face those inevitabilities with a kind of a redeeming grace’ 

'It should be treated with the reverence it deserves and preserved in a time capsule somewhere. For The Last Bell, like Dark Trade before it, strikes this writer as a radical act, the kind of work that not only captures the current boxing climate with precision, but also promotes a language and brand of honesty one feared had been eradicated from the sport in recent years... beautifully written... McRae, 29 years after Dark Trade, continues to write about boxing with an elegance, intelligence and maturity and again delivers the definitive text on where we are today. The Last Bell is a book plenty of people need to read but only one person could have written’ 

‘A beautiful, gripping, always surprising book about sport, life, boxing, men, women, art, ageing, family and why we get lost in things. Don McRae is a champion of sports writing. This book is a relentlessly absorbing mix of detail, humour, sadness, wisdom and colour from a life lived in that world’  

‘Boxing might not deserve [McRae’s] talent. But it sure as hell needs it.’