In the autumn of 2020 Ned Boulting (ITV head cycling commentator and Tour de France obsessive) bought a length of Pathé news film from a London auction house. All he knew was it was film from the Tour de France, a long time ago. Once restored it became clear it was a short sequence of shots from stage 4 of the 1923 Tour de France. No longer than 2.5 minutes long, it featured half a dozen sequences, including a lone rider crossing a bridge. Ned set about learning everything he could about the sequence – studying each frame, face and building – until he had squeezed the meaning from it.

Why does an international footballer with the World at his feet decide to take his own life? On November 10, 2009, the German national goalkeeper Robert Enke stepped in front of a passing train. He was 32 years old. Viewed from the outside, Enke had it all. Here was a professional goalkeeper who had played for a string of Europe's top clubs, including Jose Mourinho's Benfica and Louis Van Gaal's Barcelona. Enke was destined to be his country's first choice for years. But beneath the veneer of success lay a darker story.

It is late summer 2013. Ben Ryan, a red-haired, 40-something, spectacle-wearing Englishman, is given 20 minutes to decide whether he wants to coach Fiji's rugby sevens team, with the aim of taking them to the nation's first-ever Olympic medal. He has never been to Fiji. There has been no discussion of contracts or salary. But he knows that no one plays rugby like the men from these isolated Pacific islands, just as no one plays football like the kids from the Brazilian favelas, or no one runs as fast as the boys and girls from Jamaica's boondocks.

Keith Brymer Jones is the star presenter and judge of Channel 4's The Great Pottery Throw Down, famous for his emotional responses to the heartfelt and personal pieces made by contestants on the show. He is also the ultimate professional craftsman who's done the hard yards to get where he is today, working his way up from being a skivvy in an industrial pottery to running his own hugely successful international ceramics business.

He's not kept a diary for decades but here, in Dog Days, Andrew Cotter draws inspiration from the great Samuel Pepys; like him, he bears witness to the extraordinary everyday as the world tilts on its axis in our own unsettling era. And so, with Olive and Mabel at his side - actually, dawdling in the long grass or sleeping upside down - Andrew takes a clear-eyed, often hilarious walk through a year that encompasses all of life from the crushingly mundane to the decidedly odd.

There's no doubt that Dein has been one of the most significant and influential figures in British football for over three decades—operating at club and international level. He was a prime mover in the creation of the Premier League, hugely influential within the England set-up and, of course, was the mastermind—along with Arsène Wenger—in creating the glory days of Arsenal Football Club, leading the team for almost a quarter of a century.

You may not recognize my name-or my face for that matter-but it's very likely you've seen me at work. I've managed to cram quite a bit into my thirty-year acting career. In fact I've helped put more bums on cinema seats than Will Smith or Tom Hanks. Who else can say that they've helped destroy a Death Star? Defeated an evil sorceress? Taught magic to Harry Potter? Become a Jedi Master? Reluctantly hitchhiked across the galaxy in search of the answer to the Ultimate Question?

At six years old, Terry was told by his headteacher that he would never amount to anything. He spent the rest of his life proving that teacher wrong. At 66, Terry had lived a life full of achievements: becoming one of the UK's best-selling writers, winning the Carnegie Medal and being awarded a knighthood for services to literature. Following his untimely death from Alzheimer's disease, the mantle of completing Terry's memoir was passed to Rob Wilkins, his former assistant, friend and now head of the author's literary estate.

Always By My Side traces Jim Nantz's career, from creating his own imaginary TV studio he created as a boy to his college days rooming with future PGA Tour golfers to his chance meeting with NBC Sports producer Don Ohlmeyer that started him on a path that led to a successful CBS network audition at the age of 26. Along the way, he remembers his friendships with such sports royalty as Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Peyton Manning, Tony Dungy, Tom Brady, Bill Belichick, and Bill Walton.

This is the story of the greatest achievement in the history of international football. After decades of failure, Spain won the European Championship in 2008 and then the World Cup in 2010. At Euro 2012 they became the first team to win three consecutive tournament titles. Graham Hunter was inside the dressing room as the players celebrated after the finals of the World Cup and Euro 2012.

Sir Tony Robinson is a much-loved actor, presenter and author with a stellar career lasting over 50 years. Now, in his long-awaited autobiography, he reveals how the boy from South Woodford went from child stardom in the first stage production of Oliver!, a pint-size pickpocket desperately bleaching his incipient moustache, to comedy icon Baldrick, the loyal servant and turnip aficionado in Blackadder.

Who is the man behind the many voices of Rob Brydon? Read by the man himself, this audiobook memoir will reveal the warm heart behind one of Britain's favourite impressionists. A multi-award-winning actor, writer, comedian and presenter known for his warmth, humour and inspired impressions, Rob Brydon has quickly become one of our very favourite entertainers.

For the past 10 years, leading Canadian journalist and cultural critic John Doyle has been traveling the globe to observe World Cup and other soccer matches played at the highest level. The result is a Bill Bryson-esque narrative full of wit and insight, concluding with the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. In between his encounters with the delirious fans, the crazed taxi drivers, the leprechauns and the lederhosen, Doyle examines the evolution of soccer as a global phenomenon.

The seven-foot Dirk Nowitzki is one of the great players in basketball history. With a devastating fadeaway and unexpected agility, the Dallas Mavericks superstar helped to pioneer the modern three-shooting game and became a global ambassador for the sport. Award-winning novelist and sportswriter Thomas Pletzinger traveled with Nowitzki for more than seven years, seeking the secret of his success and longevity. In novelistic detail, Pletzinger tells the dramatic story of how a lanky kid from the German suburbs became a top-five all-time scorer and NBA champion.

Born in 1957 in Deptford, south London, Danny's first job after dropping out of school at the age of 15 was in One Stop Records, a small record shop in London's West End, frequented by Elton John and Mick Jagger, a store rather like the one in High Fidelity.

Sir Tony Robinson is a much-loved actor, presenter and author with a stellar career lasting over 50 years. Now, in his long-awaited autobiography, he reveals how the boy from South Woodford went from child stardom in the first stage production of Oliver!, a pint-size pickpocket desperately bleaching his incipient moustache, to comedy icon Baldrick, the loyal servant and turnip aficionado in Blackadder.

Why does an international footballer with the World at his feet decide to take his own life? On November 10, 2009, the German national goalkeeper Robert Enke stepped in front of a passing train. He was 32 years old. Viewed from the outside, Enke had it all. Here was a professional goalkeeper who had played for a string of Europe's top clubs, including Jose Mourinho's Benfica and Louis Van Gaal's Barcelona. Enke was destined to be his country's first choice for years. But beneath the veneer of success lay a darker story.

For the past 10 years, leading Canadian journalist and cultural critic John Doyle has been traveling the globe to observe World Cup and other soccer matches played at the highest level. The result is a Bill Bryson-esque narrative full of wit and insight, concluding with the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. In between his encounters with the delirious fans, the crazed taxi drivers, the leprechauns and the lederhosen, Doyle examines the evolution of soccer as a global phenomenon.

The seven-foot Dirk Nowitzki is one of the great players in basketball history. With a devastating fadeaway and unexpected agility, the Dallas Mavericks superstar helped to pioneer the modern three-shooting game and became a global ambassador for the sport. Award-winning novelist and sportswriter Thomas Pletzinger traveled with Nowitzki for more than seven years, seeking the secret of his success and longevity. In novelistic detail, Pletzinger tells the dramatic story of how a lanky kid from the German suburbs became a top-five all-time scorer and NBA champion.

If you're a man of a certain age you'll know there comes a point in life when getting a sports car and over-analysing your contribution to society sounds like a really good idea. With a good job in sales and marketing and a nice house in Manchester that he shared with his wife and kids, John Bishop was no different when he turned the dreaded 4-0. But instead of spanking a load of cash on a car that would have made him look like a senior stylist at Vidal Sassoon, he stumbled onto a pathway that ultimately lead him to become one of the nation's best loved comedians.

After covering the American sports scene for 15 years, Chuck Culpepper suffered from a profound case of Common Sportswriter Malaise. He was fed up with self-righteous proclamations, steroid scandals, and the deluge of in-your-face PR that saturated the NFL, the NBA, and MLB. Then in 2006, he moved to London and discovered a new and baffling world - the renowned Premiership soccer league. Culpepper pledged his loyalty to Portsmouth, a gutsy, small-market team at the bottom of the standings. As he puts it, “It was like childhood, with beer.”

Transmission, Hari Kunzru's new novel of love and lunacy, immigration and immunity, introduces a daydreaming Indian computer geek whose luxurious fantasies about life in America are shaken when he accepts a California job offer.

In the middle of Oliver Horovitz's high school graduation ceremony, his cell phone rang: It was Harvard. He'd been accepted, but he couldn't start for another year. A caddie since he was 12 and a golfer sporting a 1.8 handicap, Ollie decided to spend his gap year in St. Andrews, Scotland - a town with the UK's highest number of pubs per capita, and home to the Old Course, golf's most famous 18 holes - where he enrolls in the St. Andrews Links Trust caddie trainee program.

Journalist, presenter, broadcaster, husband, father, vigorous all-rounder – Alan Partridge – a man with a fascinating past and an amazing future. Gregarious and popular, yet Alan’s never happier than when relaxing in his own five-bedroom, south-built house with three acres of land and access to a private stream. But who is this mysterious enigma? Alan Gordon Partridge is the best – and best-loved – radio presenter in the region. Born into a changing world of rationing, Teddy Boys, apes in space and the launch of ITV, Alan’s broadcasting career began as chief DJ of Radio Smile....

This is the story of the greatest achievement in the history of international football. After decades of failure, Spain won the European Championship in 2008 and then the World Cup in 2010. At Euro 2012 they became the first team to win three consecutive tournament titles. Graham Hunter was inside the dressing room as the players celebrated after the finals of the World Cup and Euro 2012.

Soccer has been America's Sport of the Future since 1972. The Men in Blazers are two English-born, soccer-obsessed broadcasters who have savored the dizzying growth of the game along with millions of Americans, as if it was a rollicking, sporting telenovela playing out in real life. Written in such a way that fully immerses Americans in the history and culture of the world's game, their Encyclopedia Blazertannica relives the careers of such greats such as George Best, Maradona, Beckham...and Alexi Lalas.

Random House presents the audiobook edition of The Mechanic written and read by Marc 'Elvis' Priestley. In the high-octane atmosphere of the Formula One pit lane, the spotlight is most often on the superstar drivers. And yet, without the technical knowledge, competitive determination and outright obsession from his garage of mechanics, no driver could possibly hope to claim a spot on the podium.

There's no doubt that Dein has been one of the most significant and influential figures in British football for over three decades—operating at club and international level. He was a prime mover in the creation of the Premier League, hugely influential within the England set-up and, of course, was the mastermind—along with Arsène Wenger—in creating the glory days of Arsenal Football Club, leading the team for almost a quarter of a century.

Oliver Reed may not have been Britain's biggest film star - for a period in the early 70s he came within a hairsbreadth of replacing Sean Connery as James Bond - but he is an august member of that small band of people, like George Best and Eric Morecambe, who transcended their chosen medium, became too big for it even, and grew into cultural icons. For the first time Reed's close family has agreed to collaborate on a project about the man himself.

The athletes competing in the 1960 Rome Olympics included some of the most honored in Olympic history: decathlete Rafer Johnson, sprinter Wilma Rudolph, Ethiopian marathoner Abebe Bikila, and Louisville boxer Cassius Clay, who at 18 seized the world stage for the first time, four years before he became Muhammad Ali.