The Sports Bookshelf

SNOOKER BOOKS Willie Thorne: Taking A Punt On My Life Published by Vision Sports Publishing What’s it about? At the peak of his fame, former snooker star Willie Thorne led a life that presented him pretty much as a walking caricature. A leading player during snooker’s boom years in the 1980s, he did everything that the media wanted from the central characters of their new back page soap opera. He worked hard at the table and partied hard away from it; he made good money from his skill with a cue and if it didn’t last him long there was plenty more where it had come from as sponsors and television executives queued up for a piece of the action. He revelled in his celebrity, indulged his hangers-on and when there was female attention to be enjoyed he was not inclined to resist.

Sports books for Christmas Scratching your head for a Christmas gift idea? Let The Sports Bookshelf guide you through the maze of possibilities to make the right choice. Here's our selection of motor sport books published this year:   The Limit: Life and Death in Formula One's Most Dangerous Era , by Michael Cannell (Atlantic Books) When Dan Wheldon, the English Indycar racing driver, was killed in a spectacular crash in Las Vegas in October, the story made headlines in British newspapers, mainly because fatalities are nowadays relatively rare in motor racing.   The Limit looks at an era when such tragedies were almost expected. Focusing on 1961, it specifically examines the battle between Ferrari drivers Phil Hill and Wolfgang von Trips for the Formula One world championship, a battle quite literally fought to the death. Hill and Von Trips had risen to the top of their profession from very different roots, the former a college drop-out from California who worked as

Sports books for Christmas Scratching your head for a Christmas gift idea? Let The Sports Bookshelf guide you through the maze of possibilities to make the right choice. Here's our selection of athletics books published this year:   Usain Bolt: The Story of the World's Fastest Man , by Steven Downes (SportsBooks) Considering that he was largely unknown, at least outside the world of track and field, until the Beijing Olympics of 2008, the speed with which Usain Bolt has risen to become to the best known athlete has been extraordinary. Yet the experts knew what was coming long before the rest of us, among them the athletics writer Steven Downes , who was told to remember the name when he interviewed Bolt at the 2003 world youth championships, after he had won the 200m in a competition record time. Downes has followed Bolt’s career ever since, watching him establish a permanent place in the record books by winning an unprecedented gold medal hat-trick in the 100 metre

Sports books for Christmas Scratching your head for a Christmas gift idea? Let The Sports Bookshelf guide you through the maze of possibilities to make the right choice. Here's our selection of golf books published this year:   The 100 Greatest Ever Golfers , by Andy Farrell (Elliott & Thompson) Golf writer Andy Farrell afforded himself a self-congratulatory Tweet after Tiger Woods followed Rory McIlroy and Lee Westwood in taking the weekend headlines with their tournament wins in California, Hong Kong and South Africa. All three figure in Farrell’s choices for The 100 Greatest Ever Golfers , a fascinating book that serves not only as a celebration of the finest exponents of the game since the first Open Championship in 1860 but also provides a bite-sized history of championship golf. Farrell, formerly golf correspondent for the Independent and Independent on Sunday titles and now freelance, has written profiles for each of the 100 players, in which he nicely balan

William Hill Sports Book of the Year award -- the contenders The winner of the 2011 William Hill Sports Book of the Year will be revealed next Monday.  This week, The Sports Bookshelf presents a run-down of the seven titles on the short list. Today: Into The Arena: The World of the Spanish Bullfight (Profile Books) THE STORY: In 2008, Alexander Fiske-Harrison established his literary credentials when his play, The Pendulum, set against a background of anti-semitic tension in the Vienna of 1900, and in which he also starred, made its debut in the West End and received favourable reviews.  At around the same time, he wrote an essay about bullfighting for Prospect magazine, the reaction to which led him to move to Spain to study the subject in greater depth, in part drawn by its literary heritage -- Ernest Hemingway, for example, was a notable aficionado -- and in part, as a former member of the World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace, to see if he agreed with those who would have t

William Hill Sports Book of the Year award -- the contenders The winner of the 2011 William Hill Sports Book of the Year will be revealed next Monday.  This week, The Sports Bookshelf presents a run-down of the seven titles on the short list. Today: The Ghost Runner: The Tragedy of the Man They Couldn't Stop (Mainstream) THE STORY: John Tarrant was something of a celebrity in the 1950s and 60s, mingling with the crowds at high-profile long-distance running events, then suddenly joining the race himself, having arrived with his vest and shorts hidden beneath a long overcoat.  He became known as the Ghost Runner.  The popular press loved him. But his appearances on the front and back pages were more than a stunt.  Often, if he didn’t collapse from exhaustion first, he would win the race, leaving crack marathon runners trailing in his wake as he set and maintained a fearsome pace. Tarrant had dreamed of being an Olympic athlete and wanted to join Salford Harriers, hoping