Gareth Thomas's Proud and Bobby Moore biography head the line-up of winners at the 2015 Cross British Sports Book Awards

• Bobby Moore: The Man in Full is Biography of the Year

• Thirty-One Nil is best Football Book

• Cricket Book award goes to Wounded Tiger

• Gareth Thomas's Proud is Autobiography of the Year

Gareth Thomas, Matt Dickinson, James Montague, Richard Parks, Peter Oborne, Alastair Down, Herbie Sykes, Bill Jones and Anna Krien were recognised for their outstanding contributions to sports literature at the 2015 British Sports Book Awards, sponsored by pen makers Cross.

They were the headline winners at a ceremony hosted by broadcaster and former cricketer Jonathan Agnew at Lord's cricket ground in London.

Gareth Thomas, the former Wales and British and Irish Lions captain who played both Rugby Union and Rugby League in a glittering career, won the Autobiography of the Year prize for Proud (Ebury Press), written with the help of journalist and author Michael Calvin, which tells the story of how Thomas found the courage to admit to being gay in the macho world of rugby.

Thomas dedicated the award to Danny Jones, the Keighley Cougars rugby league player who last month died from cardiac arrest triggered by an undetected heart condition.

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Co-writer Calvin was himself a winner in 2014 with The Nowhere Men, his study of football's vast army of talent scouts, which was named as Football Book of the Year and won the public vote for overall Sports Book of the Year.

Publishers Yellow Jersey and Bloomsbury both scored two wins each.

The 2015 category winners all now go forward to a public online vote to determine the 2015 Cross Sports Book of the Year.  More details...

Football Book of the Year this time is Thirty-One Nil (Bloomsbury), written by James Montague, a freelance sports writer who set out to discover what the World Cup means in some of the world's most remote football outposts, in the nations whose quest for a place in the finals begins long before the major players have even thought about their route to the showcase event.  The title commemorates the record scoreline in a World Cup qualification match, when Australia beat American Samoa 31-0 in April 2001.

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Montague beat a strong field that included Bobby Moore: The Man in Full (Yellow Jersey), which instead won Biography of the Year for Matt Dickinson, chief sports writer at The Times.

Dickinson's portrait of the 1966 World Cup winning captain was notable not only for the depth of research but for its lack of sentimentality, delving behind the golden boy image to discover the true identity of one of football's greatest icons, not with any malevolent intent but simply to find the real person behind the caricature.

Available from: Amazon, Waterstones, WHSmith

Richard Parks, another former Wales rugby player, won Rugby Book of the Year for Beyond the Horizon: Extreme Adventures at the Edge of the World (Sphere), in which Parks tells the story of how he moved on when injury ended his career prematurely to take on extreme challenges such as climbing the highest mountain in every continent and visiting both the North and South Poles, all in the space of seven months.

Available from: Amazon, Waterstones, WHSmith

Peter Oborne's expansive Wounded Tiger: The History of Cricket in Pakistan (Simon & Schuster) won the Cricket Book of the Year award, turning the tables on Dan Waddell's Field of Shadows, the story of an English cricket tour of Nazi Germany, by which it was pipped for the Cricket Society-MCC Book of the Year.

Available from: Amazon, Waterstones, WHSmith


Alastair Down, the horse racing writer and bon viveur, won the Horse Racing Book of the Year for Cheltenham Et Al (Racing Post Books), a collection of his witty and colourful journalism for the Racing Post.


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Cycling Book of the Year went to The Race Against the Stasi (Aurum Press), in which journalist and author Herbie Sykes tells the incredible story of Dieter Wiedemann, the East German cyclist and a poster boy for the athletic supremacists of the communist Eastern Bloc and the Peace Race, the cycling stage event dubbed the Tour de France of the East.  Wiedeman, though, abhorred his country's ideology, fell in love with a girl from the other side of the Berlin Wall and, in defiance of the Stasi secret police who sought to control his life, defected to the West.

Available from: Amazon, Waterstones, WHSmith

Bill Jones, the writer and television producer who was Best New Writer in 2012 for The Ghost Runner, won the Outstanding Sports Writing award for Alone: The Triumph and Tragedy of John Curry (Bloomsbury), which explores the troubled life and early death of the former Olympic figure skating champion.

Available from: Amazon, Waterstones, WHSmith

Anna Krien took the Best New Writer award this time for Night Games: Sex, Power and a Journey into the Dark Heart of Sport (Yellow Jersey) which began as the reporting of a rape case involving a young Australian rules football player and developed as an eye-opening expose of a culture of abuse towards women in Australian sports.  Night Games was the winner of the 2014 William Hill Sports Book of the Year award.

Available from: Amazon, Waterstones, WHSmith

Other awards went to Reuel Golden as editor of The Age of Innocence: Football in the 1970s (Taschen), a photographic history that won Illustrated Book of the Year, to Elizabeth Allen (Weidenfeld & Nicolson/Orion) and Jane Beaton (Kew Publicity), who co-ordinated the Publicity Campaign behind Roy Keane's The Second Half, and to Waterstones as Retailer of the Year.

Sir Michael Parkinson, the journalist and broadcaster, received a special award for his Outstanding Contribution to Sports Writing.

Each of the individual category winners will be entered into an online public vote to determine the overall Cross British Sports Book of the Year.

The winners:

Autobiography Proud: My Autobiography (Ebury Press), by Gareth Thomas with Michael Calvin.

Biography Bobby Moore: The Man in Full (Yellow Jersey), by Matt Dickinson.

Football Thirty-One Nil: On the Road with Football's Outsiders (Bloomsbury), by James Montague

Rugby Beyond the Horizon: Extreme Adventures at the Edge of the World (Sphere), by Richard Parks.

Cricket Wounded Tiger: The History of Cricket in Pakistan (Simon & Schuster), by Peter Oborne.

Horse Racing Cheltenham et AL: The Best of Alastair Down (Racing Post Books), by Alastair Down.

Cycling The Race Against the Stasi: The Incredible Story of Dieter Wiedemann, The Iron Curtain and The Greatest Cycling Race on Earth (Aurum Press), by Herbie Sykes.

Outstanding Writing Alone: The Triumph and Tragedy of John Curry (Bloomsbury) by Bill Jones.

New Writer Night Games: Sex, Power and a Journey into the Dark Heart of Sport (Yellow Jersey), by Anna Krien.

Illustrated The Age of Innocence. Football in the 1970s (Taschen), edited by Reuel Golden.

Publicity Campaign Elizabeth Allen (Weidenfeld & Nicolson/Orion) and Jane Beaton (Kew Publicity) for Roy Keane: The Second Half (W & N), by Roy Keane and Roddy Doyle.

Retailer of the Year Waterstones

Outstanding Contribution to Sports Writing Sir Michael Parkinson

More reading: The full shortlists for the Cross British Sports Book Awards

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Will tragic tale of Olympic champion John Curry scoop top prize this time for writer Bill Jones?

Three years after his first book was shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year, Yorkshire writer Bill Jones is again a contender for the richest prize in sports literature.

Alone: The Triumph and Tragedy of John Curry is one of seven contenders for the £26,000 cash prize that comes with the title of William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2014.

Jones, a former Yorkshire Evening Press journalist who became an award-winning documentary maker during 27 years with Granada Television, has put together the full story previously untold of Britain's 1976 Olympic figure skating champion, who died at the age of only 44 after contracting Aids.

Painstakingly researched over three years, it is a moving story about a man who was a deeply troubled and ultimately tragic figure but also a book that pays proper tribute to a competitor of enormous artistic talent and an extraordinary drive to be the best.

Jones reveals that Curry turned to skating only after his father, a factory owner in Birmingham who had been a prisoner of war in World War Two, refused to countenance his son training as a ballet dancer, which had been his wish as a boy growing up.

When Curry senior died when John was 16, an alcoholic found dead in a London hotel in an apparent suicide, the budding star of the ice reacted to the family tragedy as a moment of liberation.  He soon moved to London, taking up skating full time and signing up for ballet lessons as well.

His first major success came at the British Championships in 1970, by which time he had accepted his homosexuality and had an affair with a Swiss skating coach, despite encountering hostility in the skating world, which at that time favoured athleticism and masculinity as the qualities to be celebrated among male skaters and regarded Curry, whose strengths were his grace and musicality, as an effeminate who damaged the image of the sport.

He might have been driven out, but instead found a supporter in Carlo Fassi, the Italian coach who had already been successful with the women skaters Peggy Fleming and Dorothy Hamill.   Fassi was much less interested in Curry's sexuality than in his potential to win championships, and it was under Fassi's guidance in 1976 that Curry swept to the European, World and Olympic titles in the space of three months.

The euphoria of winning Olympic Gold in Innsbruck was punctured within 48 hours, however, when an interview appeared in the International Herald Tribune in which he admitted he was gay.  Curry was praised for his courage in going public about his sexuality at a time when such a declaration was without precedent among sportsmen yet claimed there had been no intention on his part to come out and that his trust had been betrayed, insisting that the comments he made about the barriers he had faced to be successful in a homophobic world were off the record.

Taunts about his sexual orientation followed, most painfully when he turned up to receive an award at a sports writers' Christmas bash only for the comic hired to provide some light-hearted entertainment to introduce him as "the fairy for the tree."

Curry remained in Britain to develop the John Curry Theatre of Skating but in his rage for perfection would frequently fall out with his skaters and the venture collapsed within less than a year, at which point Curry flew to New York, where he would remain for much of the next 14 years.

His relationships included one with the British actor, Alan Bates, but it was the many casual and sometimes violent affairs he conducted while living in New York's West Village that would prove his downfall.  Given the number of friends that developed Aids as the disease swept unchecked through America's gay community it was almost inevitable that he too would succumb.

In 1991, he returned to England alone, penniless and sick and went home to his mother's house in the Midlands, where Rita Curry would look after him until he died three years later, having taken the brave decision to go public about his illness.  Alan Bates was among those who visited him in the hours before he passed away.

Bill Jones was rightly hailed for producing a compelling narrative in The Ghost Runner, the story of the athlete John Tarrant, ludicrously denied a potentially successful career by petty officialdom, which was shortlisted for the William Hill prize in 2011.  The book saw Jones voted Best New Writer at the British Sports Book Awards in 2012.

In Alone: The Triumph and Tragedy of John Curry he tackles a much bigger story, given the status Curry enjoyed as one of the country's sporting stars, and does it exceptionally well, drawing on hours of remarkably candid interviews, notably with Curry's mother and with his brother, Andrew, and on unfettered access to the skater's personal letters and other material he left behind.

Its place on the shortlist, from which the winner will be chosen ahead of the presentation ceremony on London on November 27, is richly deserved.

Alone: The Triumph and Tragedy of John Curry, by Bill Jones, is published by Bloomsbury.  Buy it here from Amazon, Waterstones or WHSmith.

Shortlist announced for William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2014

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Shortlist announced for William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2014

The shortlist for the 2014 William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award was announced today.

After deliberating over the 15 titles named on the longlist at the end of last month, the judges have whittled the field down to seven.  The winner will be announced on November 27.  The shortlisted titles are:

Bobby Moore: The Man in Full, by Matt Dickinson (Yellow Jersey Press), in which Times journalist Dickinson explores the sometimes dark personal story behind the sporting success of the World Cup captain.

Played in London: Charting the Heritage of a City at Play, by Simon Inglis (English Heritage), in which the author combines his rich knowledge of sport and architecture in a fascinating and wonderfully illustrated history of sport in the capital through the places it has been played.

Alone: The Triumph and Tragedy of John Curry, by Bill Jones (Bloomsbury). Writer and documentary maker Bill Jones charts the brilliant, troubled and tragically short life of Olympic skating champion John Curry.

Run or Die, by Kilian Jornet (Viking). The autobiography of Spanish endurance athlete and 2014 National Geographic Adventurer of the Year, Kilian Jornet, which began mountain hiking when he was only 18 months old and ultimately became the fastest person to run up and down Mt Kilimanjaro.

Night Games: Sex, Power and Sport, by Anna Krien (Yellow Jersey Press), in which the Australian writer takes the high-profile rape trial of a young Australian Rules player as the starting point for a wider examination of the murkier recesses of sport.

Floodlights and Touchlines: A History of Spectator Sport, by Rob Steen (Bloomsbury).  The writer, a sports journalist and university lecturer, explores the intrinsic place in culture occupied by spectator sports in a thematic history of professional sport.

Proud: My Autobiography, by Gareth Thomas and Michael Calvin (Ebury Press).  The story of Welsh rugby star Gareth Thomas, the first professional rugby player to declare himself to be gay while playing, sensitively ghosted by Independent on Sunday journalist Michael Calvin.

Calvin himself won the 2014 British Sports Book Awards book of the year title with The Nowhere Men, his journey into the world of football's hidden army of talent scouts.

Simon Inglis, Rob Steen and Bill Jones have previously been shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award.

William Hill spokesman and co-founder of the award, Graham Sharpe, said: “In this year’s rich and varied shortlist lie compelling explorations of the personal struggles and triumphs of some of our most esteemed sporting figures, an enquiry into the dark side of sporting culture and not one, but two fascinating social histories.

"The quality of writing speaks for itself – it’s an extremely exciting time in sports-writing.”

The William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award is the world's longest established and most valuable sports-writing prize. As well as a £26,000 cash prize, the winning author will receive a free £2,500 William Hill bet, a hand-bound copy of their book, and a day at the races.

The judging panel for this year’s award comprises: retired player and former chairman of the Professional Footballers’ Association, Clarke Carlisle; broadcaster and writer John Inverdale; broadcaster Danny Kelly; award-winning journalist Hugh McIlvanney; and columnist and author, Alyson Rudd.

The chairman of the judging panel is John Gaustad, co-creator of the award and founder of the Sportspages bookshop, the once much-loved haunt of sports book lovers.

The winner will be announced at an afternoon reception at BAFTA, in central London, on Thursday November 27.

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Rugby star Gareth Thomas's autobiography Proud on longlist for 2014 William Hill Sports Book of the Year

The autobiography of Welsh rugby star Gareth Thomas – the former captain of Wales and the British Lions and the highest-profile sportsman in the UK to come out as gay – is among 15 titles on the longlist for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award 2014.

Thomas’s book Proud, published last month, tells the full story of his struggle with his sexuality, which he kept from his now ex-wife Jemma and teammates through much of his career, and how several times he contemplated taking his own life before deciding to make his homosexuality public in 2009.

Biographies and autobiographies dominate the list, from which will be selected the 26th winner of the award, the most valuable and prestigious prize in sports literature.

Mike Tyson‘s no-holds-barred Undisputed Truth is among them, alongside Alone, the story of the tragically short life of John Curry, the figure skater who had 20 million Britons glued to their TV sets as he changed the perception of ice skating from marginal sport to high art, written by Bill Jones, author of The Ghost Runner, a wonderfully crafted book about the athlete John Tarrant, who became a sensation in the 1950s by gatecrashing races from which he was barred because expenses paid to him as a teenage boxer led to him being labelled as a ‘professional’ athlete.

Football life stories include Matt Dickinson’s Bobby Moore: The Man in Full and Stewart Taylor‘s Stuck in a Moment, the poignant story of Paul Vaessen, the former Arsenal striker who achieved fleeting fame on the back of one famous goal against Juventus in Turin but whose career was ended early by injury and who subsequently died as a drug addict.

Olympic gold-medallist Nicole Cooke, the first British cyclist to have been ranked World No.1, makes it with her autobiography The Breakaway, as does Paul Reese for The Three Degrees, the story of the West Bromwich Albion footballers Cyrille Regis, Laurie Cunningham and Brendan Batson, who did so much to further the drive against racism in football.

The longlist in full (alphabetically by author’s surname):

The Breakaway: My Story, by Nicole Cooke (Simon & Schuster).
Bobby Moore: The Man in Full,  by Matt Dickinson (Yellow Jersey Press).
An American Caddie in St. Andrews: Growing Up, Girls and Looping on the Old Course, by Oliver Horovitz (Elliott & Thompson).
Played in London: Charting the Heritage of a City at Play, by Simon Inglis (English Heritage).
Alone: The Triumph and Tragedy of John Curry, by Bill Jones (Bloomsbury).
Run or Die: The Inspirational Memoir of the World's Greatest Ultra-Runner, by Kilian Jornet (Viking).
Night Games: Sex, Power and Sport, by Anna Krien (Yellow Jersey Press).
In Search of Duncan Ferguson: The Life and Crimes of a Footballing Enigma, by Alan Pattullo (Mainstream Publishing).
The Incredible Adventures of the Unstoppable Keeper, by Lutz Pfannenstiel (Vision Sports Publishing Ltd).
The Three Degrees: The Men Who Changed British Football Forever, by Paul Rees (Constable).
Floodlights and Touchlines: A History of Spectator Sport, by Rob Steen (Bloomsbury).
Stuck in a Moment: The Ballad of Paul Vaessen, by Stewart Taylor (GCR Books).
Proud: My Autobiography, by Gareth Thomas (Ebury Press).
Undisputed Truth: My Autobiography, by Mike Tyson with Larry Sloman (HarperSport).
Love Game: A History of Tennis, from Victorian Pastime to Global Phenomenon, by Elizabeth Wilson (Serpent’s Tail)

William Hill spokesman and co-founder of the Award, Graham Sharpe, said: “There is something for everyone on this year’s longlist; from the inspirational, surprising and sometimes troubling stories behind some of our best-known sporting stars, to masterful social history and the more unusual subjects of ultra-running and golf-caddying. This diverse range of topics is testament to the fact that sports-writing is in rude health.

“I am also very pleased to see that three of the 15 longlisted titles are written by women – a first for a William Hill longlist – though I’d like to see an even greater share of voice for female writers in the future”.

The William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award is the world's longest established and most valuable literary sports-writing prize. As well as a £25,000 cash prize, the winning author will receive a free £2,500 William Hill bet, a hand-bound copy of their book, and a day at the races.

The judging panel for this year’s Award consists of: retired professional footballer and former chairman of the Professional Footballer’s Association, Clarke Carlisle; broadcaster and writer John Inverdale; broadcaster Danny Kelly; award-winning journalist Hugh McIlvanney; and columnist and author, Alyson Rudd. Chairman of the judging panel is John Gaustad, co-creator of the Award and founder of the Sportspages bookshop.

The shortlist will be announced on October 24 October. The winner will be announced at an afternoon reception at BAFTA, in central London, on Thursday November 27.

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