The Sports Bookshelf

OUT NOW:   A selection of the latest football books Mark Bright, the former Crystal Palace and Sheffield Wednesday striker, is the week’s headline-maker with his autobiography, My Story: From Foster Care to Footballer (Constable), which has been featured or serialised in a number of national newspapers, including an excellent piece for the Mail on Sunday by James Sharpe. Written with the help of Kevin Brennan, who has previously ghosted for ex-Scotland footballer John McGovern, snooker player Willie Thorne and football manager Alan Curbishley, the book describes Bright’s journey from a troubled upbringing in Staffordshire, to earning £10-a-week for his first contract at Port Vale and finally reaching the top of the game, forming a famous partnership with Ian Wright at Crystal Palace and playing in two FA Cup finals before retiring to a career as a sometime media pundit and now full-time coach at Palace. It is an engaging, sometimes harrowing story. Particularly moving and i

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

Brave Paralympian Martine Wright scoops Autobiography prize Add caption The inspiring story of the GB Paralympic athlete Martine Wright has been named Sports Autobiography of the Year at the 16th Sports Book Awards and will be a strong contender for overall Sports Book of the Year for 2018, which will be decided by a public vote. Written in collaboration with journalist Sue Mott, Unbroken , published by Simon & Schuster, tells the remarkable story of Martine’s incredible fight back from the horrors of the July 7 atrocities in London in 2005, when she was sharing a carriage on a tube train on the Circle Line with a suicide bomber, who detonated his device just outside Aldgate station. Seven passengers around her were killed among 52 who lost their lives that day but she survived, albeit at the cost of both her legs. Martine, who took up wheelchair tennis and sitting volleyball as part of her rehabilitation, represented Great Britain in the latter at the 2012 Paralympics

Forever Young: The Story of Adrian Doherty - Football's Lost Genius. Oliver Kay is chief football correspondent at The Times Times football journalist Oliver Kay has won the 2017 Cross Sports Book of the Year award for his debut book Forever Young: The Story of Adrian Doherty, Football’s Lost Genius. Kay, the newspaper’s Chief Football Correspondent, was named as the overall winner after sports book fans were asked to vote for their favourite among the nine category winners selected by the judges and announced at a ceremony at Lord’s Cricket Ground last month. Forever Young, which charts the tragically short life of former Manchester United player Doherty, was written with the co-operation of Doherty’s family in Belfast and Kay thanked them in a tweet on learning the news, declaring himself to be “amazed and delighted”. Read The Sports Bookshelf's review of Forever Young Doherty, a maverick character among United’s golden generation of Ryan Giggs, David

The shortlist announced in the autobiography section of the Cross Sports Book Awards for 2017 features two footballers, two Olympic athletes, a cricketer and a Formula One world champion. Those hoping to clinch the top prize when the winners are announced at Lord’s Cricket Ground next month are: • No Nonsense: The Autobiography , by Joey Barton (Simon & Schuster) • Watching the Wheels: My Autobiography , by Damon Hill (Macmillan) • This Mum Runs , by Jo Pavey (Yellow Jersey, PRH) • Unexpected: The Autobiography , by Greg Rutherford (Simon & Schuster) • Unguarded: My Autobiography , by Jonathan Trott (Sphere, Little Brown) • A Life in Football: My Autobiography , by Ian Wright (Constable, Little Brown) The titles from the longlist that missed the cut were: Triumphs & Turbulence , by Chris Boardman (Ebury, PRH); What Doesn’t Kill You… by Johnny Herbert (Transworld); Firestarter , by Ben Stokes (Headline); The Inside Track , by Laura Trott & Jas

WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2016 The winner is announced Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life. By William Finnegan (Corsair) £9.99 William Finnegan  (centre) shows off the 2016 William Hill  Sports Book of the Year Award, flanked by (left-to-right)  judges Graham Sharpe, Alyson Rudd, Hugh McIlvanney, Mark Lawson, John Inverdale and Clarke Carlisle. Surfing memoir Barbarian Days, described as “compelling, elegiac and profound” by the chair of the judging panel, has won the 2016 William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award for American author William Finnegan. The book, which has already won a Pulitzer Prize for the veteran New Yorker magazine writer, tells the story of Finnegan life through the prism of his 50-year obsession with surfing, from his childhood days in California and Hawaii to the present day. Barbarian Days beat a particularly strong field to land the £28,000 cash prize that goes with the award, which also comes with a leather-bound commemorative cop

WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2016 On the Shortlist Mister: The Men Who Taught the World How to Beat England at Their Own Game By Rory Smith (Simon & Schuster), £18.99 Review by Jon Culley Alan Rogers during his days as coach of the Iranian team Persepolis Big-name interviews sell newspapers, we are always told.  But how often does a star player tell you anything you did not already know? Football is a micro-managed business these days, with minders and media advisers never far away. It is why Times journalist Rory Smith admits the stories he most enjoys writing are often the less obvious ones, with interview subjects who may seem obscure on the face of it but frequently come with a fascinating back story waiting to be told. So when a friend drew his attention to a story in Southport's local paper about a belated honour for a war hero his curiosity was instantly piqued. The war hero was Alan Rogers, who had as a teenager served as a gunner on a Roy

WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2016 On the shortlist: Forever Young: The Story of Adrian Doherty - Football's Lost Genius. By Oliver Kay (Quercus) Review by Jon Culley Tales of rising stars robbed of the chance to fulfil their potential are not new but Oliver Kay's story of the fame that fate denied to Adrian Doherty stands out from the crowd. Doherty, a former apprentice at Manchester United, was a genuine phenomenon, even among a clutch of young players as gifted as those United were nurturing in the late 1980s. The names that would become known as United's golden generation - Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, David Beckham, Nicky Butt and the Neville brothers - were united in their awe of him, a player whose natural ball skills were allied to lightning pace and a fearless attitude that belied his rather shy persona. Sir Alex Ferguson knew within 15 minutes of first setting eyes on him that he wanted to sign him.  He offered him a five-year contract befo

The shortlist for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award – the world’s richest and longest-running prize for sports writing – has been revealed following the deliberations of the judging panel, who have whittled down a longlist of 17 to a shortlist of seven. Six sports are represented on the list, the majority sharing a common theme in that they dig deep into the psyche of their subjects, showing how their strengths and weaknesses helped and hindered them in the pursuit of their dreams. This is demonstrated in two memoirs set against the backdrop of the sea - Barbarian Days, by journalist William Finnegan, and Find a Way, by swimmer Diana Nyad. Barbarian Days, surfing’s first appearance in the 'Bookie Prize' field and already a Pulitzer Prize-winner, tells the story of a restless young man whose sport both anchors him and takes him around the world as he becomes an adult. Diana Nyad’s memoir is a testimony to the indomitability of the human spirit: a wor