Tag: sports
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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…
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#29: ‘The Fight’ by Norman Mailer
‘The Fight’ is Norman Mailer’s first-hand account of Muhammad Ali and George Foreman’s famous meeting in Kinshasa, Zaïre in 1975, for the world heavyweight title. ‘The Fight’ is one of those classic books that regularly appears in the regurgitated online ‘top-ten’ lists of boxing books that you must read! Obviously, the history of professional boxing…
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#28: ‘The Art and Aesthetics of Boxing’ by David Scott
‘The Art and Aesthetics of Boxing’ by David Scott is a really great exploration of how artists have tried to represent boxing and boxers, through literature and visual arts. As Scott lays out the history of artistic representation of the sport and its participants, there is also a parallel thread building, addressing the necessity to…
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#27: ‘In Black and White’ by Donald McRae
‘In Black and White – The Untold Story of Joe Louis and Jesse Owens’ by Donald McRae is a brilliantly deep and thorough exploration of the tandem sporting careers and eventual friendship of sporting legends, boxer Joe Louis, and athletics all-rounder Jesse Owens. If you’ve read my previous posts you’ll know just how highly I…
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#26: ‘Jacobs Beach’ by Kevin Mitchell
‘Jacobs Beach – The Mob, the Garden & the Golden Age of Boxing’ by Kevin Mitchell focuses on the period during which Mike Jacobs was the talent booker for Madison Square Garden, at the time the only place to make a career as a top tier boxer. If you were a boxer in New York,…
Writers on Boxing 