Sport & Fitness

The seventieth anniversary of the 1936 Olympics was marked with Guy Walters’ ‘Berlin Games: How Hitler Stole the Olympic Dream’ (John Murray, £20). Best known as a writer of wartime thrillers, Walters debunks some of the myths that have grown up around the Games and sensationally reveals that Baron de Coubertin, founder of the Modern Olympics, was bribed by the Nazis to attend: ‘The bitter old man was greedy for his Nobel Peace Prize and compromised by a huge pile of Reichsmarks’.

Twenty-four years later, Abebe Bikila became the first African to win an Olympic gold medal, taking the marathon title in Rome after running without shoes. Former Face editor Paul Rambali’s poignant ‘Barefoot Runner’ (Serpent’s Tail, £11.99) is about far more than Bikila’s exploits on the track. The former shepherd boy became an unwitting figurehead for black African nationalism, later being implicated in a failed coup against Emperor Haile Selassie. Feature continues

That leaves one title which I must admit to not having read: ‘Preferred Lies: A Journey to the Heart of Scottish Golf’ by Andrew Greig (Weidenfeld, £12.99). If the least-known book on the shortlist proves also to be the winner, then it would not be the first time: in 1998 Robert Twigger’s ‘Angry White Pyjamas’, about aikido, controversially beat Tony Adams’ ‘Addicted’.

Since no long list for the William Hill is revealed, which other books might have been in contention? The judges could hardly have missed two doorstoppers: Aussie cricketer Steve Waugh’s refreshingly candid 801-page autobiography, ‘Out Of My Comfort Zone’ (Penguin, £25) – no ghostwriter needed here, apparently; and David Goldblatt’s even weightier ‘The Ball Is Round’ (Viking, £30), a ‘global history of football’ that succeeds in being both enlightening and entertaining. They might also have cast an admiring glance at Gordon Burn’s ‘Best and Edwards: Football, Fame and Oblivion’ (Faber, £16.99), the pick of several books following a ‘compare and contrast’ formula. Burn’s acknowledged source material – from Herman Melville to Don DeLillo, Jack London to Philip Roth – hints at its scope.

On a lighter note, this year has brought three superb A4 picture books: ‘You Are the Ref’ (The Observer, £12.99) celebrates 50 years of Paul Trevillion’s unique illustrative style, exemplified by his cult comic strip. Trevillion also drew Roy of the Rovers, featured in Brendan Gallagher’s ‘Sporting Supermen: The True Stories of Our Childhood Comic Heroes’ (Aurum, £12.99) alongside Alf Tupper, Kangaroo Kid, Hotshot Hamish and the indefatigable William Wilson – whose heroics ranged from a vital but hitherto unknown role in the Battle of Waterloo to winning Olympic gold in the Modern Pentathlon and bowling out Australia, like Bikila, in his bare feet.

Finally, ‘The Best of Charles Buchan’s Football Monthly’ is edited by Simon Inglis as part of English Heritage’s ‘Played in Britain’ series (English Heritage, £16.99). As Inglis states in his introduction: ‘Heritage is generally thought to reside in historic buildings, in places and landscapes… there is heritage in ephemera too’. He reveals that in 1950, around 80 sports magazines were on sale in the UK, ten focusing just on football. Publishers capitalising on Britain’s sporting appetite is clearly nothing new.