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Originally published in 2005 under the title La Tierra Herida, this book grew out of a series of conversations that took place during the previous summer between Miguel Delibes and his son, Miguel Delibes de Castro. Acknowledged as one of Spain’s foremost novelists and essayists of the 20th century, Miguel Delibes won every literary award his country had to offer. In 1975 he was elected into the Spanish Royal Academy and used the occasion of his acceptance speech (later to be published under the title A World that is Dying) to make explicit his growing concerns about the future of the planet. Miguel Delibes de Castro, an internationally recognised research biologist, was for many years the Director of the Biological Station at the world-renowned Doñana National Park. He was an adviser to the Spanish delegation at the Rio de Janiero Conference on Biodiversity and was awarded the King James I prize for his efforts in protecting the environment. Father and son, novelist and scientist, each with a life-long commitment to the environment, discuss the environmental changes threatening our planet at the start of the 21st century, and whether or not we can find the means and summon up the will to reverse them. It is the father, speaking here as the anxious citizen, and pessimistic for our future, who asks the layman’s questions; it is his son who provides the scientific explanations, and offers whatever cause for optimism there is to be found. Miguel Delibes de Castro has provided a Postscript, written in November 2019, shortly before the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Madrid, which brings events up to date.

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Of all the great cycling champions, Jacques Anquetil - the first man to win the Tour de France five times - remains the most mysterious. A prodigy, he burst upon the racing scene at the age of 18, defeating the world's best in the Grand Prix des Nations. From that moment on, insists Pierre Chany, 'he no longer belonged to himself'. Yet, perhaps more than any of cycling's legends, he managed to protect his private life from public gaze. Outwardly confident, and yet profoundly shy; rational and calculating, and yet superstitious and haunted by fear of death, Anquetil was an enigma. He defied the conventional picture of a racing cyclist: elegant on or off the bicycle, winning seemed to come too effortlessly; and he was too fond of the good life that his successes enabled him to enjoy. The French public did not really know what to make of him. 'His courage defied imagination, but nobody noticed because his style was so perfect,' said his manager, Raphael Geminiani. His domination of the 1961 Tour de France, which he led from first day to last, earned him the title 'Master Jacques', but was greeted by boos and whistles. It was only as he neared retirement that Anquetil finally received the acclaim his achievements deserved. In this, the first full-length English book about Jacques Anquetil, Richard Yates explores the enigma of this great French rider. Richard Yates is an English cycling historian who has lived for many years in France; he is the author of several books about French cycling.

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Pedro Delgado's 13-year racing career spanned one of cycling's golden decades. Riding against Hinault and Fignon in their prime in the early 1980s, then later against Roche and LeMond, through to mentoring Indurain in the 1990s, he took part in the Tour de France and in one of the other grand tours in every year but his first and last. His final haul of one Tour and two Vuelta victories perhaps does not do justice to his talent, but then he was a rider whose defeats were often every bit as memorable, and every bit as spectacular, as his victories, and they too could be accompanied by controversy. An innate climber, he learned how to time trial, but it was that natural inclination to attack whenever the gradient steepened, whether wisely or impulsively, that would move spectators to tears - sometimes of pure joy; sometimes of bitter disappointment. But in the end he was always capable of a smile, because he knew better than most how to take those 'two imposters of triumph and disaster' in his stride. More than a cycling biography, this book gives a rare and often amusing insight into the inner world of the professional peloton in that era - life in the team hotel; the obsessions about diet and health; the eccentricities and foibles of both the riders and their directors; as well as the loyalties and feuds provoked by this, the hardest of sports.

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"Tomorrow we ride. that's what my brother Louison and I used to say as we arranged to meet: every day while we were racing cyclists, and then just on Sundays when we weren't competing any more. We kept on riding until the end of his life, because even then - especially then, perhaps - we always understood each other best on bikes. We had always needed a bike beneath us. In the words of the song, we took the high road and the low road: in cycling, the glory days always have less glorious ones on their tail. Thanks to Louison, I had the good fortune to ride with him through the golden years, the 50s: the years of post-war reconstruction, of Coppi and Bartali, of Kubler and Koblet, of Gaul and Van Steenbergen, Anquetil and Darrigade. These are names that speak of the aristocracy of cycling, and the fierceness of the competition. Every day, Louison and I took pleasure in cycling together, whether on our intimate journeys through Brittany or the Alps, or in the frenzy of the Tour de France or Giro d'Italia." Jean Bobet. Jean Bobet's book is not so much a biography of his superstar brother Louison, nor his own autobiography, but rather an account of the intermingling of their two lives. And what lives - Louison, triple Tour de France winner and World Champion and Jean (no mean rider himself) who gave up an academic career to ride in the service of his brother in pursuit of sporting glory. Set in the period after the war, this story brings alive the romance of the great races and the star riders of the day whose exploits lifted the public spirit after years of conflict and economic hardship.

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J. B. Wadley's career as a cycling journalist spanned more than 40 years and encompassed every aspect of the sport. The first British writer to cover the Tour de France and the great one-day Classics, his were the words that first put us in among the continental peloton. But he was equally at home among crack-of-dawn time-trialists, trackmen, randonneurs and record-breakers. His enthusiasm embraced them all, and he wrote about each aspect of cycle sport with an authority and an inimitable eye-witness style that never failed to convey its particular drama. All of this is reflected in this selection of his work, drawn from his early days as a young reporter with The Bicycle, through the years when he edited Sporting Cyclist and then International Cycle Sport, to his last major book, My 19th Tour de France.

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Miguel Indurain will pass into history not just as the first cyclist to win five straight Tours de France, but also as the standard-bearer for a whole nation. While Spain lived through the dream of his repeated victories the country came to a standstill, for Indur?!in stole people's hearts not just by the number, but by the manner of his victories. Seeing him on the road or away from the action, the gallant loser or the strong, calm victor, the Spanish gained hope, and then faith. And so did many others, for it was the dignity and modesty that Miguel Indur?!in invariably displayed, in victory and defeat, that endeared him to us all. A farmer's son from a small village in Navarra, he never strayed far from his roots, nor did he allow his extraordinary success to go to his head. Javier Garcia Sanchez is a prize-winning novelist with a passion for cycle racing. In this biography of Miguel Indur?!in he takes us on an emotional journey through Indurain's prodigious career. He recounts his exploits and great battles in the saddle, the glory moments and the disappointments, and describes his passions, his ideas, and his land.

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At the age of 20, Dennis Horn won his first English Rose - the emblem of a National track champion. Throughout the 1930s he rapidly graduated from the rough and tumble of makeshift grass track racing at country fairs and gala sports days in provincial towns to assail the heights of British track cycling on the great urban cycling bastions of the time - the hard-surfaced stadiums of London's Herne Hill and Manchester's Fallowfield - and become the star of British track racing. Every year from 1931 to 1938 he was awarded the season-long Meredith Trophy to add to those legendary gold and silver cups he'd won in fiercely contested track battles in front of crowds of tens of thousands. It was a cycling scene entirely unique to Britain in the years before World War II. But this is more than a simple tale of a strapping rural lad who took on and beat the streetwise metropolitan champions of his era. Dennis Horn, son of a Fenland blacksmith, proved himself to be as astute as any of his urban contemporaries at treading the fine line between amateurism and professionalism as defined by the puritanical British cycling establishment of their day.

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Sheffielder Tony Hewson is a former champion racing cyclist who won the 1955 Tour of Britain and went on to represent his country in the Warsaw - Berlin - Prague and the Tour de France. His first book, "In Pursuit of Stardom", was a widely acclaimed memoir of the 1950s telling how he and his companions faced handicap and privation in their struggle to earn a living a-wheel on the European continent. "A Cyclist's Worst Nightmare" covers a similar time-scope, though as a collection of individual but interrelated stories it employs a variety of different literary genres - autobiography, biography, discourse and fiction. Whilst each piece can be enjoyed in its own right, the work as a whole casts light on an era of UK cycling history in the aftermath of World War II that until now has been somewhat neglected and forgotten. Some events, for example the tumultuous birth and demise of the rebel British League of Racing Cyclists that split the sport and framed its future, have ramifications to this day. From foul-mouthed Jean Robic ('I haven't enough enemies!') to aggressive Korean war-veteran Reg ('Heroes we were - fat thanks we get.') via bullied national service 'nutter' Michael ('a queer boy wi' them fancy togs n' that weird show-off bike'), the mood is one of a shared sense of grievance from real and imagined characters who see themselves as put-upons in search of recognition. The theme of the social outsider will ring bells with any reader who has ever been a committed cyclist in the British Isles, and will also be of interest to many who have not.

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For much of cycling's "Fabulous Fifties" it was Brian Robinson alone who flew the flag for Britain abroad - that is until three young men set out to emulate his success, starting from ground zero. This book tells the story of how, along with fellow Yorkshireman Vic Sutton and South Londoner John Andrew, the intrepid Tony Hewson set off to conquer the European racing scene, first off in an old, battered, converted ex-WD ambulance, then in an oil-leaking pre-war Wolseley with a caravan in tow. Variously mistaken for gypsies, terrorists, undertakers, even market traders, these were our original cash-starved, have-a-go pioneers, whose inspiration prompted Tom Simpson and succeeding generations of would-be stars to cross the Channel. It is an often hilarious sometimes sad but never bitter saga of daring-do that found the trio rubbing shoulders with Coppi, Anquetil, Van Looy and the other greats of the era. It tells of how Andrews won a place in the prestigious Mercier-BP trade team and of how Sutton conquered the headlines with a brilliant display of climbing in the mountaains of the 1959 Tour and its relates Hewson's own pickings of primes and placings in after-Tour criteriums.It also provides a wonderfully evocative insight into what life was like in France and Belgium back in that far-off era.

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For a century professional cycle racing on the Continent has been shaped by a complex relationship between three groups: newspapers and television which organised the races and reported them; industry which sponsored the teams of riders; and the riders themselves. They have always needed each other but, because their interests are different, they have continually been in conflict with one another. The one interest they do share is in endowing cycle racing with its unique character - its emphasis on heroism and an extraordinary willingness on the part of the rider to suffer. So, the stories about the races and the riders have always been somewhat taller than the reality. In this most elegant and insightful book, Dutch sociologist Benjo Maso identifies the truth behind the legends of cycle racing, and the Tour de France in particular, as he effortlessly weaves this compelling history of the sport.

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Why did Reg Harris want to become a professional road racer? Why did Britain's top time-triallist sit on a dustbin to annoy the RTTC? Why did Jacques Anquetil want to put the British '25' record on the shelf for three decades? And what stopped British cycling being as great as it could have been? How could people passionate about bike-racing, and dedicated to the sport they loved, have made sure that it never became a major sport in Britain, and that British cycling never became a force in the world? This Island Race has the answers and all the fascinating anecdotes and insights that go with them. It tells of blood on the carpet, of lifelong feuds and personal animosities, and of the fear, jealousies and suspicion that have riddled British cycling from the days of the penny-farthing. It could almost be a crime novel. But this is British cycling - seen from the inside. Les Woodland has spent a lifetime in cycling as an organiser, coach and writer - in Britain, in Flanders and now in France. That, and a passion for the history of the sport, have given him an unusual insight into the dusty corners of British and world cycling. His books have been published across the world and in numerous languages.

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Dutch sportswriter, Nando Boers, and Pedro Horrillo, a Spanish cyclist riding for the Dutch Rabobank team, conceived the idea at the end of 2008 to correspond regularly via email throughout the coming season. They would exchange thoughts about the racing, the results and events in the cycling world. The correspondence, starting early in 2009 begins in that fashion - two friends swapping stories and experiences. Then in May everything changes, utterly: Horrillo crashes, horrifically, in the Giro d'Italia, tumbling 80 metres down a cliff face. Miraculously, after days in a coma, he survives but he will never race again. The correspondence is eventually resumed, and continues in fits and start over the next three years. Boers, infinitely patient and encouraging, is able to cope with long periods of silence from his friend. He understands the psychological healing will take longer than the physical. Then in 2012, Horrillo is able to confront his demons, returning to the scene of his crash where 'my first life ended and my second life began' and describing it in one beautiful, final letter. 'Amigo, here is the story of my pilgrimage to Italy.When you've read this, hopefully you'll understand that I feel free and relieved. ' The book includes 12 pages of black and white photographs by Timm Kolln.

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This is the story of Alf Engers and the pursuit of speed, set against a backdrop of cycling clubs, shop-owners, framebuilders, riders, racers, team managers and officials. It loops from the Paddington Track to the Skol Six, Herne Hill to the National Road Race Championships and from Boroughbridge to Barnet, in and out of time and place to capture the truth of a racing career of unequalled achievement, charisma and controversy. Constructed from extensive interviews with Alf Engers, I Like Alf is the definitive tale of a mythical and charismatic folk hero of British cycling. Where I came from it was so very different: up at five o’clock in the morning, the tinkle of shoe plates on the road, the smell of embrocation, the stillness of the morning, just you and the timekeeper: 5-4-3-2-1-GO! It is the essence of cycling. If I had gone on to do what I wanted to do I would have won the Tour de France, but that's how the dice were rolled.

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This is a biography of Brian Robinson, racing cyclist. Brian Robinson, the first Englishman ever to complete the Tour de France, went on to make a career as a professional cyclist in what is generally regarded as one of the toughest eras in a very tough sport. He adapted to French life, the continental style of racing and the taxing demands of a long season with clear-headed tenacity. For all the British riders who later followed him to Europe - and there have not been many since his days as a lone coureur anglais, still a comparatively rare breed - he was, without dispute, the great pioneer.

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One of THE 10 MUST-READ CYCLING BOOKS OF 2014 according to the influential Peloton magazine. This is the story of Luis Ocana, the champion cyclist whose entire career constantly veered between heroism and tragedy, always missing out the middle way. Born into abject poverty during Spain's 'years of hunger' and brought up in France, throughout his adult life he suffered from the effects of his childhood malnutrition and the perpetual question of self-identity - the common lot of the exile - Spanish or French, or neither one nor the other? Enigmatic and contradictory, Ocana was driven by a fierce pride, and an all-or-nothing scorn for caution and careful calculation which made him one of the most dramatically exciting riders ever.This is a biography that has been a long time in the making. Carlos Arribas, cycling correspondent of the newspaper El Pais, and Spain's foremost cycling author, has spent years compiling the material and admits that, even as a child, he was affected by Ocana's repeated misfortunes.What he has written is more than a conventional biography. He defines it as a 'fictionalised life story', or a 'biographical novel'.All the duly documented facts are there, but to that solid skeleton has been added the flesh and blood of imagined (but totally plausible) conversations, meetings and encounters. These are not mere decoration; they serve perfectly to recreate the emotions and recollections of those who knew him, encountered him, loved him, or coped with him. It also provides a compelling entry into exploring the complex personality of Ocana himself."If I was going to write one story about cycling it would have to be that of Ocana. He was the cyclist who made us fall in love with cycling, who made us sense the truth of this sport: love, happiness and tragedy." Carlos Arribas

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Every year on the last weekend of October the death knell of the cycling season is sounded by the National Hill Climb Championship. It's been won by luminaries like Brian Robinson, Chris Boardman and Malcolm Elliott, and yet the story of the championship is one of ordinary people doing extraordinary things, of amateur cyclists prevailing against the professionals. It's a tale of obsession, pain and asceticism - the key elements in the fight against the insidious grasp of gravity.The violence of the race is set against the beauty of the landscape, from the supernatural past of Pendle Moor to the granite outcrops of Dartmoor, from the glacial High Peak to the bucolic charms of the Cotswolds. It's an esoteric and uniquely British event, a hymn to the clustered contours of this island, sung by the Corinthian exponents of amateur sport. In an era when cycling as a sport has never been more popular, this ideal is more important than ever.A Corinthian Endeavour traces the full history of the Championship event from its inception in 1944 through to 2014, and the incorporation of a Women's Championship from 1998 onwards. It is illustrated with 28b/w and 21 colour photographs.

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2010 is the centenary of the introduction of the Pyrenees into the Tour de France route. It was a contentious decision at that time to send riders on their primitive bicycles into the high mountains. How Tour organiser Henri Desgrange was tricked by his assistant, Georges Steines, into agreeing to direct his riders over 2,000-metre cols is one of the great legends of Tour history. The 1910 race was won by the French champion Octave Lapize, who added to the controversy on the top of the Col du Tourmalet by shouting out to the Tour officials, 'Vous etes des assassins! Oui, des assassins!' - 'You are murderers! Yes, murderers!' For Lapize himself, this was his only Tour victory, but he was an outstanding one-day classics rider and also a fine track cyclist, winning a bronze medal at the 1908 Olympics. During the First World War Lapize, a fighter pilot in the French army, was shot down in June, 1917, and died in a hospital the following month. For all his initial misgivings, Desgrange had no hesitation in calling the Pyrenean venture a great success and those high cols immediately became an indispensable part of any Tour route. In the 100 years since Octave Lapize's first epic ascent the Tourmalet has figured 73 times. Author, Jean Bobet, writes: In the early 1950s, my brother Louison and I were living in the Eastern suburbs of Paris. Each time we went training, we would cycle past the Cafe Lapize in Villiers-sur-Marne. This Lapize seemed to follow us everywhere. At the time, Lapize toe straps were the only ones on the market. At the Montlhery motor racing circuit there was the famous slope known as the Cote Lapize, which determined the outcome of every race held there. Back in Villiers-sur-Marne, you couldn't find Octave Lapize at the cafe any more. We knew he had been killed in the war, the 1914-18 one. People even said he died a hero. The Cafe Lapize belonged to the champion's father. One day, I ducked under the arbour at the entrance and went inside. Across the large room, I came face to face with the great Octave Lapize, in a large pastel drawing on the wall, resplendent in his French champion's tricolour jersey. I was looking at the portrait of a true aristocrat. An inscription underneath read "Winner of the Tour de France, Paris-Roubaix (three times), Paris-Brussels (three times).' I spent fifty years thinking about Octave Lapize. Then, one day, I decided to follow his tracks and tell his story. Thanks to him, I experienced the golden age of cycling at the beginning of the twentieth century. The Lapize years.

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