Ali, Pele, Lillee and Me: A Personal Odyssey Through the Sporting Seventies - Rilegato

Viner, Brian

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0743285700 ISBN 13: 9780743285704

Casa editrice: Simon & Schuster Ltd, 2006

Riassunto

'For lovers of sport, there has never been a better decade to be alive, and in front of the telly, than the 1970s.' Brian Viner's boyhood coincided with an era that was to him, and many others, a golden age of sport. It was the decade of the Rumble in the Jungle, and of Kevin Keegan falling off his bike on Superstars. Red Rum won three Grand Nationals and Bjorn Borg five consecutive Wimbledons. Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson joined forces in the Australian cricket team and together became the formidable Lilian Thomson, mother of all fast-bowling partnerships. In rugby union, to this day, there has been no finer try than the one scored by Gareth Edwards, for the Barbarians against the mighty All Blacks, at Cardiff Arms Park in 1973. Nor, for as long as football has been played, wherever it has been played, has there been a finer team than the 1970 Brazilians. But were all these heroes truly heroic? What became of them in later years? Comparing his childhood adulation with his adult experiences of meeting many of these icons in the course of his work as a sports journalist, Brian Viner discovers some surprising truths about the dreams and realities of sport as both player and spectator. Revealing and very funny, this is an essential read for anyone who has played football in satin shorts or secretly blubbed at a video of Botham's Ashes.

Su questo libro

Recensione:

‘As you might surmise from the title, Ali, Pelé, Lillee and Me is not short of compelling characters . . . The author is constantly making [connections] with his sporting heroes: sometimes direct, sometimes by proxy, always with an anecdote worth hearing. This is an unusual sports book in that it is not dedicated to one particular pastime or descriptive of one particular individual . . . [Viner’s] odyssey through the Seventies, which threatens at first to descend into rosy-spectacled reminiscence, turns instead into a beautifully structured journey through a sporting life, constantly enlivened with unexpected detours . . . Viner digresses, [but] the Tristram Shandy of sports writing is always sufficiently in control of his material to haul a chapter back on course just when it is heading for delightful irrelevance. One of the most appealing elements is the way that Viner allows others to say the good stuff . . . Viner doesn’t shoehorn gags into his text, and most of the jokes issue from the mouths of others. But he has a keen eye and a sharp ear, and skewers contemporary vanities with the same accuracy that he applies to the excruciating lessons of childhood. This book is difficult to classify, but very easy to enjoy’
Andrew Baker, Daily Telegraph
'Hilarious' INDEPENDENT
‘Through the prism of nostalgia, Viner views the Seventies as a golden age in the history of sport. In this highly affectionate memoir, he recalls how his schooldays were dominated by thoughts of cricketing legends including Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson, golfing geniuses such as Jack Nicklaus and Tom Watson, and titanic boxing clashes, most memorably the Rumble In the Jungle in Zaire in 1974, where Muhammad Ali seized the world crown from George Foreman...What makes Viner’s book so special is that, thanks to his job as one of Britain’s leading sports writers, he went on to meet many of his heroes, and the tales of these encounters are wonderfully readable’
Mail on Sunday

L'autore:

Brian Viner was born in 1961 and grew up in Southport, Lancashire. He was the Mail on Sunday's award-winning television critic between 1995 and 1999, since when he has been a columnist on the Independent. He lives with his family in Herefordshire.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Simon & Schuster Ltd
• Data di pubblicazione: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0743285700
• ISBN 13: 9780743285704
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 320