GOLDEN GIRL!
KELLIE by Kellie Harrington with Roddy Doyle (Sandycove €19.99, pp 320)
THIS book opens with a teenage Kellie sitting on a wall in inner city Dublin, drinking, taking drugs and being constantly confronted by gardaí with her friends. Having been sent to England to stay with an aunt, on her return she managed to get a local boxing club to agree to let her train there and the rest is history.
The world and Olympic champion is brutally honest and her trademark wit is well matched with Doyle’s similar style. Her commitment to living a normal life despite her achievements is admirable.
LE FRIC: FAMILY, POWER AND MONEY by Alex Duff (Constable €16.80, 314 pp)
WHO knew that the rights to run the Tour de France are owned by one reclusive French family, the Amaurys? They take millions of Euros home in dividends — ‘le fric’ means the dough. The compelling story moves effortlessly from the empty boulevards of German-occupied Paris to the heart of the City of London, from a quiet house in Tring, Herts, to the 21 lungbusting hairpin turns on the ascent to Alpe d’Huez. One of the best books you will read this year.
CLOSER TO THE EDGE by Leo Houlding
(Headline €28, 352 pp). IN summer 2020 a photograph went viral. It showed a three-year-old boy, with a shock of platinum hair and a huge grin, wearing a climbing harness and helmet high on the north-east ridge of the Piz Badile, a monster rock climb some 4,000ft high in Switzerland.
He was Jackson, the son of Leo Houlding, a professional climber and one of the world’s most successful explorers. The photo is printed in this palm-sweating memoir of Houlding’s extraordinary exploits, from extreme rock climbing to remote mountain exploration, and from base jumping to trekking in Antarctica.
The chapter describing Jackson’s climb is disarmingly entitled Family Outings. Also present was Houlding’s wife Jess, who is evidently not a woman of nervous disposition.
This is a must for anyone who believes that a life without adventure isn’t really a life worth living.
THE GAME: A JOURNEY INTO THE HEART OF IRISH SPORT by Tadhg Coakley (Merrion Press €16.95, 259pp)
GRAND in scale yet deeply personal at the same time, this is by turns poetic and lyrical. An explanation of memory, of truth, in the rich tradition of Brian Friel and John McGahern. Part memoir, it captures the author’s time as a player and fan, his love of sport and of hurling in particular, and uses it all to take on universal themes.
An exploration of how sport is ‘right there in the quiet’ rather than the noise, it’s the personal nature that makes this such a page-turner. A meditation on family as well as so much more, a book that grew out of a desire to step out from behind the characters he had written about in a previous novel and expose himself in an attempt to try and understand ‘what sport means to all of us’. Just wonderful.
CL R JAMES: A LIFE BEYOND THE BOUNDARIES by John L. Williams (Constable €35, 490 pp)
HISTORIAN, revolutionary and cricket writer Cyril Lionel Robert James was one of the most radical voices of the last century. A son of Trinidad and born in the last years of the Victorian age, he played cricket with Learie Constantine, debated with Trotsky as well as John Arlott, and was recognised as one of the greatest Black British intellectuals.
Impossibly handsome, a mesmerising orator and a notable seducer, he was also the author of Beyond A Boundary, now recognised as one of the finest books about cricket — as well as family, race and the West Indies — ever written. Now this extraordinary polymath has been honoured with a biography to suit his talents.
JORDAN HENDERSON: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Michael Joseph €14.99, 328 pp)
HENDERSON, an England stalwart and monumentally successful Liverpool captain, is one of the world’s most respected players. Captain, leader, legend — and a really good bloke as well. Togetherness on the pitch and at home is very important to him.
This is a brilliantly told story with a uniquely vivid sense of what it is like on the pitch in matches of extreme importance. The quality’s not surprising, really, as Henderson has been helped by two top Mail writers, Oliver Holt and Dominic King. The perfect book for all football fans, not just Liverpool supporters.
THE CUP by Richard Whitehead (Pitch €35, 255 pp)
FORGET birthdays and Christmas. For many football fans, FA Cup Day used to be the most important day of the year: six hours of TV from the road to Wembley, on board the team coaches, to the trophy ceremony. Magic. It’s no longer the same, sadly, not least because of the unstoppable rise of the Premier League and the staggering number of matches shown live on TV.
This beautiful book reminds us that, much more than just football, the FA Cup was a huge part of our sporting life, featuring everyone from George Formby to Paul McCartney to the Gallagher brothers.
PHIL: THE RIP-ROARING BIOGRAPHY OF GOLF’S MOST COLOURFUL SUPERSTAR
by Alan Shipnuck
(Simon & Schuster €15.99, 250 pp) YOU may regard golf as a colossal bore and golfers as overpaid divas trying to get richer, and who could blame you? But this riotous book could change your mind.
Phil Mickelson, a burly, jovial left-hander happily married to his college sweetheart and with a penchant for fast food and beer, was the antithesis of his great rival Tiger Woods, who was superfit and savagely disciplined (apart from in his private life, as it turned out).
Shipnuck is a long-time acquaintance of Mickelson, and this is biography as a full-on gossip.
He gives us all the stories about Mickelson’s darker side, notably his gambling and his outbursts. But no one can get away from Phil’s sunny outlook, his goofy grin, his strenuous charity work and his sportsmanship. An engaging read all round.