The Sports Bookshelf

Arthur Milton played for England at football and cricket yet in later years he told friends he felt as much a sense of satisfaction working as a postman in Bristol, the job he took when he retired from cricket coaching at Oxford University. "I loved the quiet of the early morning, looking at the stars,” he once said. “People used to say I'd missed the big money of present-day sport. I told them I was still a millionaire, out on my bike as life stirred so excitingly." Some would suggest that being so easily fulfilled was symptomatic of a lack of ambition, but for which he might have won rather more than his six Test caps, and not been restricted to one appearance for the England football team.  Others could argue that he was simply a man who appreciated life in all its shades, and that his sunny, even temperament was a virtue to be cherished. Mike Vockins, the former secretary of Worcestershire County Cricket Club, enjoyed a friendship with Milton spanning many year

by Jon Culley Cycling is enjoying a boom in popularity, on the printed page at least. The current best sellers among sports books include a clutch of cycling titles, and not only because curiosity has been stirred by media coverage of the Tour de France. One or two deserve their recognition on literary merit, rather than for the subject matter, not least David Millar’s compelling and at times harrowing account of his fall into the murky world of doping, Racing Through the Dark , which currently leads the best-sellers list across all sports. Millar is the Scottish rider and world time trial champion who was banned for two years after being arrested in 2004 and admitting that he had taken the blood-boosting hormone, Erythropoietin -- better known as EPO. He returned to racing and rebuilt his career, determined not only to compete without the aid of performance-enhancing drugs but to campaign against them. A stage winner in the Tour de France for the first time in 2000, Millar de

July 4-10 2011: by Jon Culley The Ghost Runner: The Tragedy of the Man They Couldn't Stop Cancer killed John Tarrant when he was only 42 but in his short life -- recounted by Bill Jones -- he was a brilliant distance runner whose dreams of Olympic glory were shattered when honesty persuaded him to admit he had been paid to box as a teenager.  Banned from amateurs-only athletics, he subsequently became ‘the ghost runner’, gatecrashing major events to prove his talent and his love of running. Published by Mainstream (July 7) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- End of the Rainbow: England's Quest for Glory in South Africa A year on, Oliver Holt , chief sports writer of the Daily Mirror who formerly wrote more expansively and with distinction for The Times, analyses England’s disastrous 2010 World Cup finals in South Africa, revealing the tensions, drama and intrigue behind Fabio Capello’s re