Tag: sports writing
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#39: ‘Fighter’ by Andy Lee (with Niall Kelly)
‘Fighter’ is the autobiography of Andy Lee. I wasn’t expecting much from this book except to get a better insight into the career of a boxer who I mainly know from his TV work here in the UK, and as the trainer of the likes of Joseph Parker. It turned out to be so much…
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#38: ‘King of the Gypsies’ – Bartley Gorman (with Peter Walsh)
‘King of the Gypsies’ is an attempt to document what is, frankly, the wild life story of bare knuckle fighter Bartley Gorman. I’ve said previously that I don’t seek out books about ‘hard men’ as they don’t appeal to me at all, but I’d heard enough about the character and personality of Gorman to pick…
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#37: ‘Ringside’ by Budd Schulberg
‘Ringside – A Treasury of Boxing Reportage’ is a collection of boxing articles written by Budd Schulberg for a number of publications, including Esquire, Boxing Illustrated, Sunday Herald and Sports Illustrated. I really like BS’s writing, which is rooted in a lifetime of fight-watching and a remarkable knack for observing the characters within the professional…
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#36: ‘In This Corner…!’ by Peter Heller
‘In This Corner…! – Forty World Champions Tell Their Story’ by Peter Heller is a collection of interviews with forty former world champions from 1912-1960s. There are some really great interviews in this book, including the likes of Charley Phil Rosenberg, Henry Armstrong, Willie Pep and Emile Griffith. I feel very lucky that a number…
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#35: ‘The Tartan Legend’ by Ken Buchanan
‘The Tartan Legend’ is Ken Buchanan’s autobiography, published in 2000. I don’t read a lot of boxers’ autobiographies as they usually follow the same dull pattern of empty, glossy celebrity books, totally lacking in substance. However, I’ve always been a big fan of Buchanan’s fighting style so I’ve had this book on my reading list…
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#34: ‘Old Holborn Book of Boxing’ edited by Peter Wilson
Published in 1969, the ‘Old Holborn Book of Boxing’ is a collection of articles, edited by Peter Wilson, about a number of boxers, including Rocky Marciano, Joe Louis, Sandy Sadler, Benny Lynch and Henry Cooper. There’s also a quiz – which I did very badly at!
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#33: ‘East End Born and Bled’ by Jeff Jones
‘East London Born and Bled – The Remarkable Story of Boxing in London’ by Jeff Jones. I really enjoyed reading this book and being led through the east end of London via its boxing clubs, gyms and venues, most of which don’t exist anymore. Though luckily for the boxing historians out there, east London does…
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#32: ‘Fen Tiger’ by Bob Lonkhurst
‘Fen Tiger – The Success of Dave “Boy” Green’ is an official biography compiled and written by Bob Lonkhurst. I was born in south London but when I was young my parents moved to Cambridgeshire and I ended up attending secondary school at Cromwell Community College in Chatteris. Sport, mainly rugby, was a big part…
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#31: ‘The Woman in the Corner’ by Gilbert Odd
‘The Woman in the Corner – Her Influence on Boxing’ is a collection of 25 essays about the wives, girlfriends and mothers of boxers, written by Gilbert Odd. This book was published in 1978 so I wasn’t expecting it to share the more enlightened language readers expect today, when it comes to discussing women’s roles…
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#30: ‘Hook to the Chin’ by Bertolt Brecht
‘Hook to the Chin’ is a short story by Bertolt Brecht, written between 1924-1933. ‘Hook to the Chin’ is a story about four men attending an evening of boxing at the Berlin Sportpalast. In a bar before the event one of the men shares a tale about a bantamweight named Freddy ‘The Hook’ Meinke. I…
Writers on Boxing 