SHORTLISTED FOR THE TELEGRAPH SPORTS BOOK AWARDS 2020 – CYCLING BOOK OF THE YEARLONGLISTED FOR THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2019'A joy.' – Ned BoultingEvery nation shapes sport to test the character traits it most admires.In The Beast, the Emperor and the Milkman, committed Belgophile and road cycling obsessive Harry Pearson takes you on a journey across Flander...

LONGLISTED FOR THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR PRIZE 2020'One of the funniest books I've read' Arthur Mathews, co-writer of Father TedWidely regarded as one of the best football books ever written, The Far Corner was a vivid portrait of the sport in the north-east and of the people who bring such passion to it. Now, a generation later, Harry Pearson returns to the region to discover how much things have cha...

A book in which Wilf Mannion rubs shoulders with The Sunderland Skinhead: recollections of Len Shakleton blight the lives of village shoppers: and the appointment of Kevin Keegan as manager of Newcastle is celebrated by a man in a leather stetson, crooning 'For The Good Times' to the accompaniment of a midi organ, THE FAR CORNER is a tale of heroism and human frailty, passion and the perils of eating an egg mayonnaise stottie without staining your trousers.

Forgotten by history, this clash of kings is given new life as Harry Pearson explores the epic Battle of Byland, shedding light on a pivotal moment in the Wars for Scottish Independence. The battle of Byland, on 14 October 1322, was a crucial battle in the Wars of Scottish Independence. This absorbing study from Harry Pearson sheds new light on one of the most overlooked battles in British history. The area of the North York Moors National Park contains some of the most dramatic and scenic...

Most British travel writers head south for a destination that is hot, exotic, dangerous or all three. Harry Pearson chose to head in the opposite direction for a country which is damp, safe and of legendary banality: Belgium. But can any nation whose most famous monument is a statue of a small boy urinating really be that dull? Pearson lived there for several months, burying himself in the local culture. He drank many of the 800 different beers the Belgians produce; ate local delicacies su...

This is a book about men and war. Not real conflict but war as it has filtered down to generations of boys and men through toys, comics, games and movies. Harry Pearson belongs to the great battalion of British men who grew up playing with toy soldiers - refighting World War II - and then stopped growing up. Inspired by the photos of the gallant pilot uncles that decorated the wall above his father's model-making table, by Sergeant Hurricane, Action Man and Escape from Colditz, dressed in ...

Writer Harry Pearson takes a warm and witty journey around Britain in pursuit of the lost folk sports that somehow still linger on in the glitzy era of the Premier League and Sky Sports to find out how and why they have survived and to meet the characters who keep them going.When Victorian public schoolmasters and Oxbridge-educated gentlemen were taming football, codifying cricket, bringing the values of muscular Christianity to the boxing ring and the athletics fi...

Slipless in Settle is a sentimental journey around club cricket in the north of England, a world far removed from the clichéd lengthening-shadows-on-the-village-green image of the summer game. This is hardcore cricket played in former pit villages and mill towns. Winner of the 2011 MCC Cricket Book of the Year, it is about the little clubs that have, down the years, produced some of the greatest players Britain has ever seen, and at one time spent a fortune on importing the biggest names i...

A decade and one dog after penning the bestselling Racing Pigs And Giant Marrows, and inspired by the purchase of his new hound, a petit basset-griffon Vendeen called Little Man, Harry Pearson returns to the world of stalking, ferreting and beating with this ramble through the countryside.Harry Pearson was born into a dog-loving family and grew up with a variety of spaniels, terriers, collies and mongrels. He currently spends several hours every day running along behind a bassett-g...

Winner of the MCC Book of the Year AwardHis father was a first-class cricketer, his grandfather was a slave.Born in rural Trinidad in 1901, Learie Constantine was the most dynamic all-round cricketer of his age (1928-1939) when he played Test cricket for the West Indies and club cricket for Nelson. Few who saw Constantine in action would ever forget the experience.As well as the cricketing genius that led to Constantine being described as 'the most ...

Following his acclaimed book about football in the north-east,THE FAR CORNER, Harry Pearson vowed that his next project would not involve hanging around outdoors on days so cold that itinerant dogs had to be detached from lamp-posts by firemen. It would be about the summer: specifically, about a summer of shows and fairs in the north of England.Encompassing such diverse talents as fell-running, tupperware-boxing and rabbit fancying (literally), and containing many more jokes about ...

Some men are born medium-paced, some achieve medium-pace, and some have medium-pace thrust upon them.Bowlers who take wickets not with pace or spin, but - at speeds between 65 and 85mph - by nagging accuracy are the commonest in cricket. So far, however, nobody has paid them any attention. Yet seam bowling remains one of cricket's most mysterious arts. George Hirst, one of the best early exponents of swerve, was as puzzled by it as his opponents. 'Sometimes it works,' he said, 'and...