The Sports Bookshelf

The winners at the Telegraph Sports Book of the Year awards 2019 were as follows: Autobiography of the Year: The Boy on the Shed , by Paul Ferris (Hodder) The candid and gripping story of a boy raised in Lisburn, near Belfast during The Troubles who became a professional footballer with Newcastle United, saw his career at the top level wrecked by injury, won a Wembley final with Barrow as a non-League player, returned to Newcastle as before quitting the game to study Law and qualify as a barrister - only to return to Newcastle as a member of Alan Shearer’s management team. _______________________________________ The Sporting Club General Outstanding Book of the Year: Berlin 1936: Sixteen Days in August , by Oliver Hilmes Berlin 1936 was the Nazi Olympics, the moment when the world’s attention turned to the German capital as it hosted the Olympic Games, the one in which Hitler was happy to extend the hand of welcome to visitors from all nations but in which he hoped to se

Nine categories to be judged as new sponsor starts three-year backing The shortlists have been announced for the annual Sports Book Awards, now sponsored by The Telegraph after the newspaper group signed up to a three-year partnership deal. The Telegraph replaces Cross Pens as headline sponsor. The awards were launched by the National Sporting Club in 2003 and for many years were known simply as the British Sports Book Awards. There are nine categories being judged this year, with the winners of each to be announced early in June. In the autobiography category, former Newcastle physio Paul Ferris’s extraordinary memoir The Boy on the Shed is joined by equestrian Charlotte Dujardin’s The Girl on the Dancing Horse , Kevin Keegan’s My Life in Football , cricketer Moeen Ali’s Moeen , How to be a Footballer by Peter Crouch and superbike star Jonathan Rea’s Dream. Believe. Achieve . The biography category sees boxing, golf, motor racing, rowing, gambling and football repre

Joey Barton Controversial footballer Joey Barton's autobiography No Nonsense has been included on the longlist for the 2016 William Hill Sports Book of the Year even though it was published only yesterday. Written in collaboration with Michael Calvin, the award-winning author and sports journalist, Barton's book promises to deliver a candid account of a life never far from the headlines on and off the field. Calvin is the third writer to work with the player, who began the project in 2014 with Times journalist Matthew Syed and made one attempt to write it himself, which he did not sustain beyond nine chapters. There is much detail, some of it quite harrowing, about his upbringing in hard-edged working class Liverpool, where many of his associates and even family members were involved in crime at one level or another.  His brother, Michael, and his cousin, Paul Taylor, are serving jail sentences for the murder of an innocent black teenager. The book has no short

Max Mosley, Guillem Balague, Ronda Rousey and David Millar also take prizes Tim Lane and Elliot Cartledge worthy winners of Cricket award for Peter Roebuck biography Chasing Shadows Andy Bull's Speed Kings and Ed Caesar's Two Hours: The Quest to Run the Impossible Marathon were among the outstanding books to be recognised as winners at the 2016 Cross British Sports Book Awards. The Times Biography of the Year prize went to Guardian journalist Bull, whose Speed Kings (Bantam Press) is the story of the four maverick adventurers who came together from disparate backgrounds to form the United States team who were four-man bobsleigh champions at the 1932 Winter Olympics. Caesar was named Freshtime New Writer of the Year for Two Hours (Viking), an engaging study of elite marathon runners from around the world and the challenge of covering the classic distance of 26 miles 385 yards in less than two hours. As in previous years, a public vote on the 10 winners of the b

The judges are pondering over 10 shortlists for the 2016 Cross Sports Book Awards ahead of the awards ceremony on 1 June. In addition to the titles under consideration for Autobiography of the Year , the longlist for which was revealed in January, the contenders in nine other categories have been named, including the new award for International Autobiography of the Year. Gareth Thomas won the 2015 Sports Book of the Year award for Proud As in previous years, after the individual category winners have been announced, each will go forward to an online public vote to determine the overall Cross Sports Book of the Year. Everyone that takes part in the public vote will be entered into a draw to win National Book Tokens. Michael Calvin, who won the overall prize in 2014 with The Nowhere Men and was the ghostwriter behind rugby star Gareth Thomas's 2015 winner Proud, has the chance to complete a hat-trick with Living on the Volcano , his study of what it takes to survive a