The news leaks about The Secret Race have vastly undersold its importance. Tyler Hamilton’s book is a historic, definitive indictment of cycling’s culture of doping during the Armstrong era.

Spellbindingly evocative ... an unforgettable homage not only to his father but to his flat-capped generation of ye grand olde days of thud and mud and Saturday's teatime urban gloaming.

Pitch perfect … This marvellous and affecting book, which is about love and fatherhood and history and manners as much as it is about football … Hamilton is a first-rate pen-portraitist.

Hamilton wrote two of the best sports books of recent years, on Brian Clough and the cricketer Harold Larwood ... a fine collection of vignettes ... make this another winner.

Hamilton takes us on a hugely enjoyable nostalgia trip...a moving depiction of how football can bind together a family.

The book is sincere and deeply honouring of Hamilton’s father as well as dead greats such as Lawton, Shankly, Jackie Milburn, Duncan Edwards and Bobby Moore...

Hamilton brings football home...heart-crackingly nostalgic ... eye-wateringly evocative.

Touching

A beautiful, heart-cracking memoir by a sublime writer