Short description
This varied and colourful collection features the obituaries of sporting greats who played, competed and died in the 20th century. They include both well-known and lesser-known heroes, including Denis Compton, Joe Di Maggio, Florence Griffith-Joyner, Alf Twinn, Jack Meyer and Cussie Charlton.
Long description
Obituaries of 20th-century sporting greats from the Daily Telegraph. This varied and colourful collection features the obituaries of sporting greats who played, competed and died in the 20th century. Amonst them are some of the finest proponents their respective sports have ever seen: Denis Compton, Joe Di Maggio, W G Grace, Florence Griffith-Joyner. Helen Wills Moody, Bobby Moore, Ayrton Senna and Johnny Weissmuller. But here too are some lesser-known heroes who contributed to sport in other ways: Alf Twinn, boatman of the Cambridge University Boat Club for half a century; 'Jack Meyer', the founder-headmaster of Millfield, whose proteges included Duncan Goodhew and Gareth Edwards; Cissie Charlton, mother of Jack and Bobby; and Gottfried Dienst, the referee who officiated at the 1966 World Cup Final. As a collection, they recall the greatest moments of sporting achievement, highlight enormous changes in sport and chart the development of sports writing in the pages of the Telegraph.
Review
Obituary writing, which used to be a matter of anodyne hagiography, has now become a literary genre of its own, and The Daily Telegraph has had a great success reprinting its obituaries. This new collection of obituaries of famous sportsmen and woman is perhaps less successful than its five previous volumes, partly because it restricts itself to one group of people, but mainly because of whatever reason sport seems not to have produced as many entertaining eccentrics as the arts, politics, or even science. The opening biography, of the great cricketer W G Grace, is positively dull reading for anyone not fascinated by cricket (and perhaps even for them), while it was clearly a struggle to say anything interesting about such great sportsmen as Joe Davis, Graham Hill, Bobby Moore or even such perhaps more promising individuals as Johnny Weissmuller, the swimming champion who became the celluloid Tarzan of the Apes, or Harold Abrahams of 'Chariots of Fire' fame. Maybe sports champions channel all of themselves into their sports and have little energy left over to live really engrossing lives. This is more of a reference book than (as with the previous volumes) a good bedside read. (Kirkus UK)