A continuous feast... The best book ever about football - or anything!

A great book that makes football absolutely fascinating to fan and non-fan alike...a tale to gladden the envious heart of every weekend athlete... Plimpton has endless curiosity, unshakable enthusiasm and nerve, and a deep respect for the world he enters

The agility and imaginativeness of his prose transforms his account of this daydream into a classic of sports reporting

Possibly the most arresting and delightful narrative in all of sports literature

With his gentle, ironic tone, and unwillingness to take himself too seriously, along with Roger Angell, John Updike and Norman Mailer he made writing about sports something that mattered.

The casual, curious, light-hearted precision of his prose is just as impressive as the way a great ball player can make the ball pop off his bat.

To suggest they have achieved classic status would be to devalue their still very immediate pleasures… [Plimpton] was a lyrical, precise observational writer, with a keen eye for human absurdity’.

What drives these books, and has made them so popular, is Plimpton’s continuous bond-making with the reader and the comedy inherent in his predicament. He is the Everyman, earnests and frail, wandering in a world of supermen, beset by fears of catastrophic violence and public humiliation, yet gamely facing it all in order to survive and tell the tale… A prodigious linguistic ability is on display throughout, with a defining image often appended at the end of a sentence like a surprise dessert.

Absorbing and compelling ... The O'Connell who dominates this book is the one who becomes fixated on the mentality of champions

O'Connell has emptied the tank here. ... What has come out ... is a psychological profile that is almost shocking at times in what it reveals about the bloody single-mindedness of the competitive gene

A fantastic book

He is a standard-bearer for the country and someone whose principles, moral compass, ideals and heroic virtue make us wish our children would aspire to be someone like him

An exceptional book ... tremendously honest

Engaging, honest and insightful. Terrific

Honest, fair and devoid of self-pity ... reflects on his life without a shred of hypocrisy or recrimination

A stunning achievement

p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Calibri; -webkit-text-stroke: #000000} span.s1 {font-kerning: none} Provides many revealing insights into the mind of a born winner

Brilliant, bruising

This is so much more than the story of their journey – it’s a superbly written, endlessly fascinating book encompassing history, geology, landscape, family memories, wars experienced and lives well lived.

One of the most unexpected and enjoyable reads of 2016… The book fizzes erudition and is delightfully leavened by the companionship of his aged and doughty father.

A very funny book - not jovial in the post-Wodehouse Boris mode but something more taught and Caledonian... The politician in Stewart never had a chance against the writer, a reliable adversary of consensus and cant.

Beautiful, evocative, and wise.

The Marches is a transporting work from a powerful and original writer.

This beautifully written account is a moving memoir of tales from along the route but also reflections on life and relationships – father and son on this their last journey together.

Rory Stewart is one of the most talented men of our era. The Marches takes us from Rory’s constituency to his family house is an attempt to understand the bloody history of the Scottish borders… The quest is fascinating even if the answers are elusive.

As the book unfurls, the march along the marches turns into a eulogy to his father, part memoir, part biography, always a love story. It also contains one of the most unflinching, moving descriptions of death I have read.

This beautifully written book is a haunting reflection of identity and our relationships with the people and places we love.

Stewart provides much food for thought about how we value our past history