Shelf life: Multi-award winning sports author Duncan Hamilton’s top books
The multi-award winning sports author Duncan Hamilton shares the books that get his top scores
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
‘My bookshelves will tell you that about two thirds of the fiction I read is written by women: Pat Barker, Penelope Lively, Anita Brookner, Irmgard Keun, Helen Dunmore,
Rose Tremain, Hiromi Kawakam, Elena Ferrante, etc, etc: Strange as it sounds – or perhaps even cockeyed – I particularly admire Edith Wharton because her fiction always reminds me what a non-fiction writer must do to make the dry bones of history dance a little. She’s so fabulously observant when it comes to describing a room, a face, a mannerism or movement or a voice. Her characters live. You get to know them and the place in which they dwell. In fact, you almost feel you’ve met them.’
The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell (four volumes), edited by Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus
‘I’d read both Animal Farm and 1984 before I “discovered” these volumes in my late teens. They’ve taught me more than any other books about how to chisel out an argument. Orwell talks about the ‘scrupulous writer’ and the questions he ought to ask himself/herself. What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly? I ask myself these questions – and a few more – whatever I’m writing: fiction, non fiction, criticism or even a note to the milkman.’
On Boxing, On Football, On Horse Racing by Hugh McIlvanney
‘When I was a boy, kicking a ball around the park with my friends, everyone wanted to be George Best. I wanted to be Hugh McIlvanney. I still do. Hugh is always described as a sports writer. I think of him as a writer who chose to write about sport. The best books about sport are never purely about the sport itself, but instead focus hard on the human condition. You can read Hugh on anyone – especially on Muhammad Ali, who he knew well – and learn so much about that. If Hugh had chosen to write novels, he would have won the Nobel Prize.’
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald A Month in the Country by JL Carr
‘I’ve put these two books together – one famous, one relatively obscure but fondly cherished – because there are similarities between them. First and most obvious is length. Second, also obvious, is the craft of beautiful writing. Third is the fact both narrators are looking back, viewing everything in the rear-view mirror of their life, which adds perspective and poignancy to the events described. On a practical level, these books showed me how to shape an ending and the emotional force required to do it so that (hopefully) the reader thinks about what you’ve written long after the last page. With Fitzgerald, it’s those last few lines, which begin: Gatsby believed in the green light. With Carr, it’s one of the loveliest sentences I’ve ever read. We can ask and ask but we can’t have again what once seemed ours forever. It’s a true statement, but melancholic and swollen with regret.