BLAZING SADDLES: The Cruel and Unusual History of the Tour de France by Matt Rendell

Quercus £9.99 pp304

“Can 40m Frenchmen be wrong?” asked the Daily Mirror when the Tour de France made its first diversion into Britain in 1974. Is the tour, as the natives think, the greatest of all sporting contests? Or is it, as some of us suspect, a collection of unusually muscled masochists pedalling through France with a pharmacy of illegal substances coursing through their veins? In his entertaining, anecdotal journey through the tour’s first 103 years, Matt Rendell highlights the controversies that have always surrounded it. In recent years, riders have been accused of getting a lift by using drugs; in the 1904 race, one cyclist was disqualified for hitching a lift on a passing car. Methods change; the urge to cheat remains. Yet the tour really is the most extraordinary test of skill, stamina and courage and Rendell’s engaging book pays tribute to the men who have tested themselves against its challenges.

A VERY BRITISH COOP: Pigeon Racing from Blackpool to Sun City by Mark Collings

Macmillan £12.99 pp248

Pigeons get a poor press. When we’re not calling them “rats with wings”, we’re trying to drive them out of public spaces. Yet some people love them. “Pigeon men”, of whom Mark Collings has met hundreds, cherish their prize birds (which often fetch thousands of pounds at auctions) and race them from one end of the country to the other. As a spectator sport, pigeon racing would seem a nonstarter. Watching wood warp is probably more exciting than waiting seven hours on a dank day to witness a handful of birds come over the horizon. Yet, every weekend, thousands of pigeon men do just that. Some even travel to South Africa to take part in something called “The Sun City Million Dollar Pigeon Race”. Collings works hard to make the world of pigeon fanciers seem comic and eccentrically charming, but the ultimate effect of his book, with its tales of obsession and monomaniacal devotion to feathered friends, is curiously depressing.

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