Marcus Berkmann

Games over

issue 29 September 2012

It seems like only hours since they ended, but people have already written and published books about the Olympics, and I have already read one.

Nicholas Lezard’s The Nolympics (Penguin, £7.99) was originally planned as a counterblast, a fusillade of righteous rage against what we all expected to be an administrative and sporting catastrophe that would blight what remained of Britain’s international reputation forever. Instead, he was as swept up by it all as the rest of us.

Even so, his book is less about watching the Olympics than about being forced to watch the Olympics, and then write 1,500 words a day about it. We can marvel at the wit and fluency he has achieved, faced with this impossible deadline, but to a great extent the book is the deadline.

Over the fortnight, irritation becomes delight becomes exhaustion: much the same response to the Games as we all had, only more so.

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