This Sporting Life

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Summary

Rugby League football in an industrial northern city circa 1960 is a life of grime, mud, sweat, intrigue and naked ambition. In This Sporting Life, David Storey recounts the fortunes of gladiator hero Arthur Machin from the day of his inclusion in the local team to the match when he begins to feel age creeping up on him. Through Arthur we are taken into his raw, often brutal world of players, backers, Saturday crowds bloody noses and broken teeth, landladies and communal baths.

Reviews

Extraordinarily mature - technically as well as emotionally
Sunday Times

About the author

David Storey

David Storey was born in 1933 in Wakefield, and studied at the Slade School of Art. He wrote fifteen plays and eleven novels, including This Sporting Life which was made into a film starring Richard Harris. His work won many prizes, including the Macmillan Fiction Award, the Somerset Maugham Award, the Faber Memorial Prize and, in 1976, the Booker Prize for Saville. He died in 2017.

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