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a racing cyclist's worst nightmare and other stories from the golden age
tony hewson. mousehold press, 239pp illus. softback £12.95

a racing cyclist's worst nightmare

i'm not well read enough to know who it was that first said 'never judge a book by its cover', but this particular volume from the excellent mr hewson could well have been designed to fit the necessary criteria. while i adore the almost eccentric output from mousehold press, this has to be one of the worst covers for a book i have ever experienced. this is perhaps a deliberate ploy, since often it's those atrocious advertisements on television that we remember most, and in the vast quantity of cycling books that increases seemingly week on week, perhaps the hope is that worst nightmare will stick out like a sore thumb.

fortunately, while reading, the cover is out of sight and very quickly out of mind, as the contents of this book are absolutely rivetting. nostalgia and retro are two words often bandied about with carefree souciance these days, quite frequently as a means of jumping aboard a contemporary bandwagon; not so the writings of tony hewson. hopefully more than a few of you will be familar with tony's initial offering also from mousehold press (in pursuit of stardom), in which case you're probably already reaching into the back pocket for your flexible friend while clicking through to mousehold's website. for those whom stardom slipped under the radar, tony was one of three british cyclists in the 1950s who took matters into their own hands shifting lock, stock and barrell to france in order to pursue the dream. the book humorously and effectively detailed their lives as continental cyclists.

tony hewson's principal claim to fame, other than his uncanny ability with a word processor, was winning the tour of britain in 1955: there's an entire chapter devoted to his privileged viewpoint of this race, where typical modesty would have us believe that winning was a complete accident, and that it was someone else's fault.

this book was described to me as a mixture of fact and fiction, but such is the skill of the author, i will admit that i had a bit of difficulty figuring out which of the chapters were of the latter genre. however, if the book has to be justified on only one factor, and one factor alone, it is the superb chapter detailing the fraught history of the national cycling union, the british league of racing cyclists and the road time trials council, during the somewhat strained period of cycling's history in the years between 1942 and 1958. if you're proud to call yourself a cyclist, particularly one with a penchant for skinny tyres and bendy bars, this is compulsory reading. you really need to know this stuff, and there really couldn't be anyone better to tell us.

while i dutifully started at page one and only put the book down when i'd reached page 239, it is eminently possible to dip in and out according to personal preference; with the exception of the chapter regarding cycling's internecine war (which occupies a generous portion of the book), all the others are short enough to be absorbed in one entertaining sitting. tony has an excellent grasp of the vernacular, an apparently photographic memory and an appreciable eye for detail, coupled with the skill to convey it all in an easily readable style. i confess to having read les nomades du velo anglais more than twice, and there is every indication that a cyclists worst nightmare will follow the same pattern, though i'm going to lend this copy to the mighty dave t first.

however, if adrian at mousehold ever finds it necessary to reprint (which i would think quite possible), i'd like to think the cover will undergo a revamp, to be replaced with a graphic that does better justice to the content. this is a collectors' item in every sense of the term - you need this book.

mousehold press

twmp

posted on monday 13 july 2009

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