Shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year"A runner must run with dreams in his heart." Emil Zatopek.In the summer of 1952 Emil Zatopek became the king of the running world with an unprecedented distance treble at the Olympic Games in Helsinki. Together with his wife Dana, who won another gold medal in the javelin, they were the embodiment of sporting romance. Born on the same day, they were champions on the same day too. Yet in 1968 this affable but eccentric...

Get inspired to reach the top of your game with 50 incredible true stories of sporting legends.Award-winning journalist Rick Broadbent has interviewed some of the greatest sporting legends of our time. In this gripping collection of 50 true stories, he shares the most exciting and jaw-dropping accounts of success, failure, injury and bravery in sport, which will in turn inspire kids to find the confidence and resilience they need to reach the top of their game. An i...

MotoGP is enjoying a period of unprecedented popularity and Ring of Fire details the acclaim, the heroism and the pressures of riding motorbikes at speeds of more than 200mph. This is a world where manufacturers invest millions and the world champion celebrates by staging mock jail breaks and giving pillion rides to a blow-up doll. One rider warms up for major races by singing Hank Marvin songs on his karaoke machine and a rising Italian star sees the world in terms of black and w...

An official landmark photographic book charting the private and public lives of Barry Sheene - one of motorsport's best-loved and most charismatic figures.Barry Sheene is arguably the greatest British motorcycle racing rider of all time. A chancer, lovable rogue and the leading sports star of his era, adored by the public and press alike, he won two world motorcycle championships – in 1976 and 1977.He achieved iconic status by being involved in some horrifi...

The Isle of Man TT - the world's most dangerous race - as seen through the eyes of Cummins, Martin, McGuinness and Dunlop.THAT NEAR DEATH THING is a life-affirming journey to the heart of the world's most dangerous race. The Isle of Man TT is a throwback to a maverick era that existed before PR platitudes and PC attitudes. WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR-shortlisted author Rick Broadbent gets inside the helmets of four leading motorcycle racers as they battle ...

'An enlightening, enjoyable and frequently very funny journey into what makes Yorkshire stand out from the crowd ... a fascinating insight into our wonderful region and the people that make it what it is.'The Yorkshire PostWritten from the perspective of an exiled Yorkshireman this bestselling, award-winning author returns to his native county to discover and reveal its soul.We all know the...

From the perspective of an exiled Yorkshireman this bestselling, award winning author returns to his native county to discover and reveal its soul.Now Then is a biographical mosaic of Yorkshire. Rick Broadbent, an award-wining author and exiled Yorkshireman, goes in search of the soul of England's biggest county and produces an all-encompassing portrait of a place that has been victimised and stereotyped since the days of Williams the Conqueror. Incorporating social history, memoir...

Brought to you by Penguin.A thousand years ago, around the time King Harold inconveniently got shot with an arrow and a group of ladies made a tapestry, in the south of France a man and his friends decided to build a house next to a church. Over the centuries many things happened in that house, none of which found its way into history books.With the coming of the first decade of the twenty-first century, One Place de l'Eglise had become rather derelict. The...

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...

On June 4,1924 George Mallory donned an oxygen set and set off for the summit of Everest with his young partner Andrew Irvine. Next day they were glimpsed through clouds heading upwards, but after that they were never seen again. Whether they died on the way up or on the way down no one knows.In the years following his disappearance, Mallory was elevated into an all-British hero. Dubbed by his friends the 'Galahad' of Everest, he was lionised in the press as the greatest mountainee...

From seals' frisky behaviour to red squirrels making their last stand in the battle against the greys, here are the mammals of Britain as you’ve never seen them before.Join Fiona Mathews and Tim Kendall on an overnight stakeout in search of the elusive pine marten. Follow them down mines inhabited by greater horseshoe bats, cavers, ravers and teenagers smoking unusual substances. Meet water voles thriving in the East End of Glasgow – despite the lack of water – and observe the bril...

Vivien Leigh was one of the greatest film and theatrical stars of the 1930s, '40s, and '50s. Her Oscar-winning performances in Gone With the Wind and A Streetcar Named Desire have cemented her status as an icon of Hollywood.From 1940 to 1960, Leigh was married to Sir Laurence Olivier, and together they were considered the royal couple of British theater. Indeed, their romance and acting partnerships captured the imagination of the public around the world.B...