From the first length to the final frame, the egg and spoon race to the Cup Final, from Jack Hobbs to Brian Clough, from Centre Court to the Great North Run, Not Just a Game captures the tension and the laughter, the pain and the pleasure, and the blood, sweat and tears. As Jane Austen put it in Pride and Prejudice, “For what do we live but to make sport…?”
Not Just a Game is a unique archive of modern British sporting life – angling, boxing, canoeing, cricket, darts, golf, motorcycling, netball, polo, rugby, rowing, running, skating, snooker, swimming and tennis – as recorded by almost 100 poets including W H Auden, Wendy Cope, Seamus Heaney, John Betjeman, Tony Harrison, P G Wodehouse, Carol Ann Duffy, Ted Hughes, Andrew Motion, Douglas Dunn, Philip Larkin, Roger McGough…and John Arlott. It’s not just a book for sports fans. It’s not just a book for poetry lovers. It’s not just a game.
Not Just a Game is a unique archive of modern British sporting life – angling, boxing, canoeing, cricket, darts, golf, motorcycling, netball, polo, rugby, rowing, running, skating, snooker, swimming and tennis – as recorded by almost 100 poets including W H Auden, Wendy Cope, Seamus Heaney, John Betjeman, Tony Harrison, P G Wodehouse, Carol Ann Duffy, Ted Hughes, Andrew Motion, Douglas Dunn, Philip Larkin, Roger McGough…and John Arlott. It’s not just a book for sports fans. It’s not just a book for poetry lovers. It’s not just a game.