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Alone

The Triumph and Tragedy of John Curry

By (author) Bill Jones
Format: Hardback
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, London, United Kingdom
Imprint: Bloomsbury Sport
Published: 31st Jul 2014
Dimensions: w 161mm h 241mm d 37mm
Weight: 698g
ISBN-10: 1408853426
ISBN-13: 9781408853429
Barcode No: 9781408853429
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Synopsis
Winner of the Outstanding Sports Writing Award, Cross British Sports Book Awards 2015 Shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year award. One winter's night in 1976, over 20 million people in Britain watched John Curry skate to Olympic glory on an ice rink in Austria. Many millions more watched around the world. Overnight he became one of the most famous men on the planet. He was awarded the OBE. He was chosen as BBC Sports Personality of the Year. Curry had changed ice skating from marginal sport to high art. And yet the man was - and would always remain - an absolute mystery to a world that had been dazzled by his gift. Surely, men's skating was supposed to be Cossack-muscular, not sensual and ambiguous like this. Curry himself was an often-tortured man of labyrinthine complexity. For the first time, Alone untangles the extraordinary web of his toxic, troubled, brilliant - and short - life. It is a story of childhood nightmares, furious ambition, sporting genius, lifelong rivalries, homophobia, Cold War politics, financial ruin and deep personal tragedy. Alone reveals the restless, impatient, often dark soul of a man whose words could lacerate, whose skating invariably moved audiences to tears, and who - after succumbing to AIDS, as so many of his fellow artists and friends did - died of a heart attack aged just 44.

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Newspapers & Magazines
Alone is more than a sports biography. ...it is a timely reminder of the fine boundary between sport and art and the courage it took, and still takes, to be a gay athlete. * Sunday Times * A terrific read, filled with juicy detail and driven by sympathy for a man who who was feted as a national hero but was extremely hard to like. * The Times * A moving and explosive biography of an ice skating genius * Manchester Evening News * A fascinating exploration of a tragic talent. * Attitude * A touching, revealing story... a book that enthrals and mesmerises in much the same way that Curry did whenever he took to the ice * Sport * Bill Jones' brilliant biography... goes far beyond Curry's achievementson the ice. Informed by hundreds of interviews and a treasure trove of letters kept by devoted friends and family, Jones manages to untangle the man's complex and deeply secretive life. * Mail Online * Jones' diligently researched and evocative book pays tribute to Curry's art and charts his demise * Sunday Times * A fascinating exploration of a deeply troubled man...a reminder of just how much courage it took to be an openly gay sportsman in the Seventies * Mail on Sunday * Jones' beautifully and sensitively written biography... does not gloss over Curry's faults...but reminds us of his genius. * Independent on Sunday * A brilliant, honest and detailed account of a tortured sporting genius. A compelling account of a troubled athlete's rise and fall. He's gone, but this biography should mean he's never forgotten again. * Mail Online *