Showing titles in Sports History

Dynamite and Davey: The Explosive Lives of the British Bulldogs is the triumphant but ultimately tragic story of Tom Billington and Davey Boy Smith. Cousins born just a couple of years apart in a small mining town near Wigan, Tom and Davey discovered the art of wrestling as schoolboys. Tom went on to become the Dynamite Kid, arguably the greatest and most pioneering wrestler in history, but his short temper and determination to reach the top of a sport dominated by naturally bigger men would be his undoing.

From “one of the best sportswriters in America” (The Washington Times)—the New York Times bestselling story of the friendship and rivalry between golf legends Tom Watson and Jack Nicklaus, whose sparring matches defined the sport for more than a decade. The first time they met, at an...

The official autobiography of Wasim Akram, the 'Sultan of Swing', one of the greatest fast bowlers in the history of cricket. For twenty years, Wasim Akram let his cricket do the talking - with his electrifying left-arm pace, his explosive striking as a batsman, and his inspirational leadership...

In 2017, after being told that no independent wrestling group could draw a crowd of more than 10,000, a group of wrestlers took up the challenge. For several years, these gladiators had been performing in front of rabid crowds and understood the hunger for wrestling that was different from the TV-slick product. In September 2018, they had the numbers to prove it: 11,263 fans filled the Sears Center Arena for the All In pay-per-view event, ushering in a new era. A year later, WWE had its first major head-to-head competitor in nearly two decades when All Elite Wrestling debuted on TNT.

After one win in 17 by the start of the summer of 2022, England needed something new. For 145 years, Test cricket was played mainly in one way: batters laid a foundation before daring to attack – and, even then, only if circumstances were favourable. Bowlers tried to bowl maidens, calculating that they would eventually force an error. But the old ways weren’t working. Then came ‘Bazball’, driven by new head coach in Brendon (‘Baz’) McCullum and captain Ben Stokes.

Why has Ferrari struggled so much in recent years? When will Ferrari win another Championship? In Forza Ferrari, FIA-accredited F1 journalist and a leading voice in ESPN's F1 coverage, Nate Saunders looks for answers to these questions and goes beyond simple answers by delving into the shifts...

Though it remains by far the world's most famous mountain, in recent years, Everest's reputation has changed radically, with long queues of climbers on the Lhotse Face, lurid tales of frozen corpses and piles of high altitude trash. It wasn't always like this though. Once Everest was remote and inaccessible, a mysterious place, where only the bravest and most heroic dared to tread. The first attempt on Everest in 1922 by George Leigh Mallory and a British team is an extraordinary story full of controversy, drama and incident, populated by a set of larger-than-life characters.

In over 75 chapters, Alex Jacques tells the story of Formula 1’s rise, fall and recovery through the extraordinary moments that shaped the direction of the world’s most dramatic sport. Covering the teams, the drivers, the bosses, and the pit crews, Alex Jacques truly takes us trackside to feel the energy and hear from the personalities we love to watch.

Committed Belgophile and road cycling obsessive Harry Pearson takes you on a journey across Flanders - through the lumpy horizontal rain, up the elbow-juddering cobbled inclines, past the fans dressed as chickens and the shop window displays of constipation medicines as he follows races big, small and even smaller, through one glorious, muddy spring. Ranging over 500 years of Flemish and European history, Pearson examines the characters, the myths and the rivalries that make Flanders a place where cycling is a religion and the riders its Lycra-clad priests.

A true cycling nut would be hard pushed to name all 36 races in just a ‘normal’ UCI World Tour. But there are so many more: 375 on the European Tour alone and many more on the America Tour (80), the Asia Tour (65), and the Africa Tour (45). It’s a year-long schedule, most of it unfamiliar. They may be amazing, they may be odd, but all have their place in the Sticky Bottle calendar. Big races and small ones find a place in Sticky Bottle as well as the relatively unknown. Here are personal and historical tales of cycling wonder and woe, plus a healthy smattering of the bizarre.

Cast aside by his family at an early age, abandoned and left to fend for himself in the woods of Washington State, young Joe Rantz turns to rowing as a way of escaping his past. What follows is an extraordinary journey, as Joe and eight other working-class boys exchange the sweat and dust of life in 1930s America for the promise of glory at the heart of Hitler's Berlin. Stroke by stroke, a remarkable young man strives to regain his shattered self-regard, to dare again to trust in others–and to find his way back home.

In December 1935, Zdenek Koubek, one of the most famous sprinters in European women’s sports, declared he was now living as a man. Around the same time, the celebrated British field athlete Mark Weston, also assigned female at birth, announced that he, too, was a man. Periodicals and radio programs across the world carried the news; both became global celebrities. A few decades later, they were all but forgotten. In The Other Olympians, Michael Waters uncovers, for the first time, the gripping true stories of Koubek, Weston, and other pioneering trans and intersex athletes from their era.

Swift, brutal, and utterly final: with knockouts, there are no grey areas; a KO is a KO. But what actually is a knockout, and why are we so fascinated by it? The Knockout is the most dramatic and devastating moment in sport. There is nothing to rival it: Not the last second goal, not the basket...

This book is about the batters who see what mortals don’t. Javed Miandad purposefully makes errors to manipulate the field, Sachin Tendulkar dug up a pitch to take on Warne, Shivnarine Chanderpaul practised non-stop on a beach with tennis balls until he mastered technique and Joe Root’s great play against spin is known to be a confluence of three random events. Others, such as Smith, Pietersen and Richards, carried on the work of a man 100 years before their time, and Ranji changed cricket with a bucket.

In the tradition of Seabiscuit, critically acclaimed author Neal Bascomb reaches back to the golden age of sport and crafts an utterly captivating narrative of what may be the most remarkable athletic feat of all time.

By creating WrestleMania, jumping into the pay-per-view field, and expanding across North America, Vince McMahon changed professional wrestling forever. 

For more than a century, professional wrestling has cultivated some of the most eccentric and compelling personalities. As the embodiment of flamboyance and intensity, the "Nature Boy" Ric Flair stood at wrestling's apex for decades, cementing his place as a once-in-a-lifetime athlete and performer. When he was in the ring, fans knew they were witnessing the very best, and he not only became a multi-time world heavyweight champion in the NWA, WCW, and the WWE, but his status as a generational great has been confirmed with inductions into numerous Halls of Fame.

‘Siya's rise from humble beginnings to lifting that World Cup trophy is the stuff of fairytales.’ MARCUS RASHFORD ‘Siya Kolisi is a warrior on the field and an inspiration off it. This book is an extraordinary reminder of what can be achieved with inner belief and an indefatigable spirit...

A Telegraph Best Book of 2025. A News Statesman Book of the Year 2025. ‘David Goldblatt is possibly the best football historian there has ever been’. Dominic Sandbrook ‘David Goldblatt is the greatest British sportswriter of the 21st century … Injury Time is an absolute classic.’ James...

'Magnificent . . . Goldblatt is the doyen of sports historians and brings to this account his forensic and telling eye for detail' - Mail on Sunday A Sunday Times Best Sports Book of the Year The epic exploration of society, politics, and economics in the twenty-first century through the prism...