Publication date: 1998-06-04
Dewey code: 796
RRP: £9.99
Price: £0.99
Review An Evening with Dickie Bird / Hodder & Stoughton Audio Books:
Publication date: 1998-10-08
Dewey code: 796
RRP: £9.99
Price: £0.01
Review My Autobiography / Hodder & Stoughton Audio Books:It's no surprise that Will Carling's autobiography has been talked about more for its coverage of his personal life than for his rugby career. But in all honesty the rugby stuff is actually by far the most interesting part of it. Carling is guarded in the extreme about his relationship with Diana, Princess of Wales, and matter of fact, maybe callously so, about breaking up with the mother of his son. However, when he talks about rugby he is engaging and apparently utterly straightforward. This is the man regarded as "the devil incarnate" by the rugby authorities yet he is also the man who led English rugby to the dominant position-at least in Britain-it holds today. His opinions on the game are genuinely interesting and this book goes some of the way to revealing what makes him tick. The combination of arrogance and doubt-traits he blames on his public school background- have combined with his natural athletic talent to create a terrific player on the pitch but something of an emotional disaster area off it. Carling has never been a likeable figure and this book doesn't make him one, but it does make his triumphs and his failings both more human and more comprehensible. -Nick Wroe.
Creator: Kerry Shale
Publication date: 1999-10-18
RRP: £10.99
Price: £9.99
Review Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea / HarperCollins Audio:The facts speak for themselves. In 1857, the Central America, a sidewheel steamer ferrying passengers fresh from the gold rush of California to New York and laden with 21 tons of California gold, encountered a severe storm off the Carolina coast and sank, carrying more than 400 passengers and all her cargo with her. She then sat for 132 years, 200 miles offshore and almost two miles below the ocean's surface-a depth at which she was assumed to be unrecoverable-until 1989, when a deep-water research vessel sailed into the harbour at Norfolk, Virginia, fat with salvaged gold coins and bullion estimated to be worth $1 billion. Author Gary Kinder wisely lets the story of the Columbus-America Dicovery Group, led by maverick scientist and entrepreneur Tommy Thompson, unfold without hyperbole. Kinder interweaves the tale of the Central America and her passengers and crew with Thompson's own story of growing up landlocked in Ohio. An irrepressible tinkerer and explorer even in his childhood days, his progress to adulthood as a young man who always had "7 to 14" projects on the table or spinning in his head adds fascinating texture and depth to the story. One of those projects would become the unlikely recovery of the stricken steamer, and the resourcefulness and drive with which the project proceeds is contrasted poignantly in the narrative with the Central America's doomed battle to stay afloat in 1857. Thompson, who spent nearly a decade planning and organizing his recovery effort, emerges as one of the great unsung adventurers of these times (the technical innovations alone required for such a task produced a windfall for the scientific community and defined a new state of the art for deep-sea explorers and treasure hunters), and the story of the steamer's sinking is compelling enough to make any reader wonder why the Central America sinking hasn't achieved greater notoriety in this Titanic-dominated area.
Publication date: 2001-09-19
RRP: £9.99
Price: £3.00
Review 1966 and All That: My Autobiography / Hodder & Stoughton Audio Books:
Authors
- Ned Sherrin
- Jon Pertwee
- Dickie Bird
- Brian Blessed
Publication date: 2001-09-06
Dewey code: 817
RRP: £9.99
Price: £5.49
Review Have You Heard the One About? / Hodder & Stoughton Audio Books:
Authors
- Brian Johnston
- Henry Blofeld
- Dickie Bird
Dewey code: 796
RRP: £9.78
Price: £4.54
Review The Wit of Cricket / Hodder & Stoughton:
Publication date: 2004-08-02
Dewey code: 796
RRP: £14.67
Price: £7.99
Review Martin Johnson Autobiography / Headline:
Publication date: 2000-10-02
Price: £9.99
Review Heaven and Hall: A Prodigal Life (BBC Radio Collection) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:
Creator: Cliff Morgan
Edition: Abridged edition
Publication date: 1999-12-02
RRP: £9.99
Price: £1.49
Review Classic Moments from a Century of Sport: The Best, the Worst, the Weirdest / Hodder & Stoughton Audio Books:
Run time: 150 min.
Creator: Robin Bailey
Publication date: 1988
Review Tales Room a Long Room / BBC Enterprises Ltd:Ten tales told by Robin Bailey as The Brigadier.
Publication date: 2001-02-01
RRP: £9.99
Price: £4.97
Review Living Every Second / Hodder & Stoughton Ltd:
Creator: Campbell Scott
Edition: Abridged edition
Publication date: 2003-10-20
Dewey code: 364
Price: £13.99
Review Seabiscuit: The True Story of Three Men and a Racehorse / HarperCollins Audio:
Publication date: 2000-02-28
RRP: £8.95
Price: £4.40
Review Sir Stanley Matthews: A Football Legend (Cherry Red Records) / Cherry Red Books:
Creator: Jasper Britton
Edition: Revised edition
Publication date: 1998-11-03
RRP: £10.99
Price: £9.95
Review Addicted / HarperCollins Audio:Arsenal and England stalwart Tony Adams combines two very '90s preoccupations in these memoirs: football and the confessional. Alongside the story of Adams' hugely successful career for Arsenal and England, Addicted also charts his decline into alcoholism and subsequent efforts at rehabilitation. The combination works surprisingly well with Adams new-found self-awareness enabling a far more thoughtful and mature insight into his footballing life than you suspect would otherwise have been the case. Thrust into the Arsenal first team at 17, his tenacity and enthusiasm made up for initial technical shortcomings and his leadership ability inevitably saw him made captain. But off the pitch things were not so straightforward. His marriage was in disarray and his drinking out of control. After a particularly intense period of "research into the illness"-a day-long bender following England's defeat on penalties to Germany in Euro 96-Adams sought help and while his account of his ongoing AA-aided recovery occasionally lapses into clichéd therapy-speak, there is a raw honesty to it that makes it both moving and affecting. Much has been made of Adams' apparent criticism of Glen Hoddle's handling of England's 1998 World Cup bid, but in reality the strength of this book comes not from the spilling of dressing-room secrets, but from its powerful depiction of the price one man continues to pay for success. -Nick Wroe.
Publication date: 2004-06-18
RRP: £9.78
Price: £0.95
Review Gazza: My Story / Headline:
Publication date: 2000-01-06
Dewey code: 364
RRP: £9.99
Price: £2.80
Review Playing the Moldovans at Tennis / Random House Audiobooks:Tony Hawks' debut book, The Round Ireland with a Fridge, was an irreverent satire. The topic of the sequel is even more absurd. Like Round Ireland, it supposedly originates from an obscure bet. This time, Hawks bets he can't track-down the Moldovan football team and beat them all at tennis. The loser must perform the Moldovan national anthem naked on Balham High Road. However, knowledge of tennis and/or football isn't required to enjoy the book. Hawks' Irish trip was characterised by willing accomplices who joined in the fun. In Moldova, Hawks also expects a good laugh. Despite the rarity of visitors, he receives an apathetic welcome as his mission provokes little more than weak smiles. Tracking down the footballers and persuading them to play turns becomes almost impossible. [+]The book treads a fine line between brilliant and juvenile, between Jeremy Beadle and the genuinely witty. Hawks' sixth-form joke of presenting a round table to Moldova's new King Arthur is especially cringe-worthy. His experience as a second-division stand-up leads to innumerable trite quips. Still, overall Playing The Moldovans At Tennis is an entertaining, easy read that will make you chuckle. It provides an interesting view of Eastern Europe's post-Communist life, while keeping you in suspense: Will he? Won't he? Suffice to say that, yes, at the end of the book someone does end up naked and singing outside a South London Woolworths. -Sarah Champion -.
Publication date: 2000-04-20
Price: £9.78
Review The Way it Was: My Autobiography / Hodder & Stoughton:"I have no regrets about anything I have done in my career or my life. I would have liked my mother and father to be around now to hear all the wonderful and complimentary things people so often say about me because my father would be very proud and my mother would believe them. " It is both sad and fitting that Sir Stanley Matthew's touching biography ended on such a personal note with him thinking, as he so often did, about other people rather than himself. But for once, all attention is on him in his timely autobiography, The Way it Was. It's a classic from rags to riches tale that takes him from the streets of Hanley in Stoke on Trent to the dizzy heights of football stardom, but the road was never an easy one and never once does Sir Stanley let us, or himself forget that. What comes across so well in this engaging and beautifully written biography, completed with the help of his close friend Les Scott, is how down to earth he really was; he was very conscious that the rewards in life only come with hard work and determination. It is the close bond he shared with his parents, especially that of his father, that comes across so memorably: "Never expect. Never take anything for granted. That way you'll never be too disappointed or hurt," his father tells him. It is advice that Stanley followed the rest of his life. [+]Sir Stanley's untimely death means the inclusion of a tribute section penned by Les and dozens of emotional tributes from friends, colleagues, fellow players and fans that speak volumes about how highly regarded he was held both in and beyond the world of football. This is a beautiful tale, absorbing and well told, that, like the great man himself, is full of good humour, charm and pure class. -Jonathan Weir.
Publication date: 2004-08-02
Dewey code: 796
RRP: £9.78
Price: £3.50
Review Martin Johnson Autobiography / Headline:
Publication date: 2004-10-07
RRP: £13.99
Price: £2.55
Review My Autobiography / Random House Audiobooks:
Authors
- Henry Winter
- Kenny Dalglish
Publication date: 1996-09-19
RRP: £9.99
Price: £3.99
Review Kenny Dalglish: My Life / Hodder & Stoughton Audio Books:
| Models & Brands:
An Evening with Dickie Bird, My Autobiography, Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea, 1966 and All That: My Autobiography, Have You Heard the One About?, The Wit of Cricket, Martin Johnson Autobiography, Heaven and Hall: A Prodigal Life (BBC Radio Collection), Classic Moments from a Century of Sport: The Best, the Worst, the Weirdest, Tales Room a Long Room, Living Every Second, Seabiscuit: The True Story of Three Men and a Racehorse, Sir Stanley Matthews: A Football Legend (Cherry Red Records), Addicted, Gazza: My Story, Playing the Moldovans at Tennis, The Way it Was: My Autobiography, Martin Johnson Autobiography, My Autobiography, Kenny Dalglish: My Life |
