This year’s Sportsbook of the Year is Unforgivable Blackness (Pimlico)
This year’s Sportsbook of the Year is Unforgivable Blackness (Pimlico), a vividly enlightening new biog of Jack Johnson, the first black American boxing champion, by Geoffrey C. Ward, the US hist-orian who pockets the £18,000 prize plus a £2,000 free bet with the award’s loyal sponsor, bookmaker William Hill. White society was outraged at the boxer’s insolence, skill and, in particular, his success with white women. Closer to home, for a festive read inducing a more cuddly reverie, can I recommend British provincial nostalgia with less of a bitter edge? I guarantee middling-oldies of a certain bent will grab the port, nuts and a quiet corner in which to wallow in The Best of Charles Buchan’s Football Monthly (ed. Simon Inglis, English Heritage, £16.99) and the estimable Brendan Gallagher’s Sporting Supermen: The True Stories of Our Childhood Comic Heroes (Aurum, £12.99),
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