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The Last Bell: Life, Death and Boxing
Donald McRae
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Description for The Last Bell: Life, Death and Boxing
hardcover.
'The Last Bell takes us on a journey through the last six years in boxing, from 2018 to 2024 as McRae loses his parents and questions why he is still obsessed by the brutality of boxing....The result is exhilarating and terrifying' The Herald, Book of the Month
‘One of the very best writers working today’ Benjamin Myers, author of The Offing and The Gallows Pole
'Thrilling and raw, this is sport writing at its best' Dina Nayeri, author of The Ungrateful Refugee
Donald McRae has been immersed in boxing for fifty years. He has followed fighters ... Read morearound the world and won multiple awards for his writing. But, in recent years, McRae’s love has waned, as criminality and corruption consume the soul of boxing.
In 2018, grieving the death of his sister and with his parents terminally ill, he sought refuge in boxing again – just as Tyson Fury completed an incredible comeback, proving that the ring can still offer exhilaration and redemption.
From Fury’s resurrection to the first undisputed heavyweight champion this century, boxing can be epic and electrifying. It can also be disappointing, as McRae discovers when he documents doping’s insidious rise or travels to Saudi Arabia where boxing ignores state repression. In The Last Bell, McRae takes us ringside to thrilling bouts with great contemporary champions and fighters as different as Fury, Canelo Álvarez, Oleksandr Usyk, Katie Taylor, Regis Prograis and Isaac Chamberlain. Whether in London or Las Vegas, he shows us what it is like to see joy pour out of a boxer in the dressing room after a magnificent victory or to hold the hand of a fighter being wheeled away on a stretcher after a devastating defeat. As he tries to reconcile the contradictions which lie at boxing’s murky heart, McRae is unflinching and compelling.
McRae helps boxers open up about their doubts and fears and charts the courage of fighters facing ordeals from depression to war. And in telling the heartbreaking story of Patrick Day, he faces death in the ring. The Last Bell is his most powerful and personal book yet, a riveting account of life, death and boxing. Show Less
Product Details
Publisher
Simon & Schuster UK
Place of Publication
London, United Kingdom
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 5 to 9 working days
About Donald McRae
Donald McRae is the award-winning author of eleven non-fiction books, which have featured sporting icons, legendary trial lawyers and heart surgeons. He has twice won the prestigious William Hill Sports Book of the Year, for Dark Trade and In Black & White. He is a three-time Interviewer of the Year winner and has also won Sports Feature Writer of the Year on three ... Read moreseparate occasions for his work in the Guardian. He lives in Hertfordshire. Show Less
Reviews for The Last Bell: Life, Death and Boxing
‘The Last Bell takes us on a journey through the last six years in boxing, from 2018 to 2024 as McRae loses his parents and questions why he is still obsessed by the brutality of boxing. He spends time with Tyson Fury, Katie Taylor, Canelo Alvarez, Regis Prograis and Isaac Chamberlain, but at the heart of the book is the ... Read moretragic story of Patrick Day and the inspiring rise of Ukrainian heavyweight Oleksandr Usyk. The result is exhilarating and terrifying’
The Herald, Book of the Month
‘As with the sport itself, boxing writing is about so much more than physical combat – it’s about the dark drama of life and death in their totality. That Donald McRae understands this implicitly makes him one of the very best writers working today. I’ll read anything he turns his hand to.’
Benjamin Myers, author of The Offing and The Gallows Pole 'Every new book about boxing by Donald McRae is cause for celebration. Nobody does it better.'
Thomas Hauser, author of Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times ‘About life, death and boxing, McRae beautifully melds those constituent parts, then transcends them, to recount a profound journey through the human experience in a way that only a writer of his immense talent and humanity could. Exceptional and unique. I can’t recommend it enough.’
David Whitehouse, author of About A Son ‘Nobody writes about boxing like Don McRae. But with The Last Bell he has written a book that moves beyond just boxing and grapples instead with what it truly means to fight. It is a book about knowing when to bite down and keep swinging, about knowing when to throw in the towel, a book about loss and defeat, and how we might, in the final reckoning, face those inevitabilities with a kind of a redeeming grace.’
Keiran Goddard, author of I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning ‘Don McRae has spent fifty years in thrall to the fight game. The Last Bell is at once a moving memoir and McRae's swansong as a boxing writer
a fine, vivid, and searching tribute to a sport than can be as lethal as it is uplifting.’
Ed Caesar, author of The Moth and the Mountain ‘The Last Bell is heart-pounding and enraging, and yet somehow tender, too, full of the grace and wisdom that comes from decades of observing and reflecting on boxing (and sport, competition, spectacle, in general). Reading about Patrick Day’s devastating final bout, I was pacing my office. Thrilling and raw, this is sport writing at its best, but also much more than that. McRae crafts an urgent and unforgettable meditation on risk, loss, and our enduring hunger to find meaning in struggle: a subject that captivates and brings together readers and writers of all kinds.’
Dina Nayeri, author of The Ungrateful Refugee ‘A beautiful, gripping, always surprising book about sport, life, boxing, men, women, art, ageing, family and why we get lost in things. Don McRae is a champion of sports writing. This book is a relentlessly absorbing mix of detail, humour, sadness, wisdom and colour from a life lived in that world.’
Barney Ronay, chief sports writer at the Guardian 'Donald McRae enjoys what boxing fans will hope is not one last successful run in the sport, chronicling it with the passion, depth and colour that only he can. The Last Bell is a personal look at the sport through a human lens and at the business of boxing with a critical eye and it shows how different both parts are. McRae proves, once again, that he is one of the great sportswriters of his time while reminding boxing fans how lucky they are to have him.'
Tris Dixon, Boxing Scene, author of Damage: The Untold Story of Brain Trauma in Boxing ‘If Dark Trade was about one man wanting to find out what it is to fight and how it feels to lose, The Last Bell is about a man who is now familiar with these things through personal experience using boxing as a reminder that he is not alone in feeling the emotions attached to them. McRae’s eyes may be wearier and slightly narrower now, but when you see modern-day boxing through them there is a surprising and refreshing clarity to be found. It is a clarity hard to find anywhere else these days and McRae, 29 years after Dark Trade, continues to write about boxing with an elegance, intelligence and maturity and again delivers the definitive text on where we are today. The Last Bell is a book plenty of people need to read but only one person could have written.’
Elliot Worsell, Boxing Scene, author of Dog Rounds: Death and Life in the Boxing Ring Show Less
