Skip to main content

Ecclestone invites Bower spotlight

Tom Bower, famous for unearthing dark secrets in the corridors of politics and business, is turning his attention to sport for the second time in his career.
The renowned investigative journalist, who won a William Hill Sports Book of the Year award for Broken Dreams, his study of corruption in football, has been working on an authorised biography of Formula One motor racing supremo Bernie Ecclestone.
The UK and Commonwealth rights to No Angel: The Secret Life of Bernie Ecclestone have been bought by Faber, who plan to publish in March 2011 to coincide with the start of the 2011 F1 season.
Bower, 64, has earned a fearsome reputation for doggedly uncovering every aspect of his subjects’ lives, favourable or otherwise. He focused his attentions on spies and Nazis in the early part of his literary career before finding fame with his exposé of Robert Maxwell, the now disgraced and deceased former owner of the Daily Mirror.
He went on to get his teeth into former Lonhro businessman Tiny Rowland and Mohamed al-Fayed before moving on to tackle Virgin boss Richard Branson, the controversial New Labour sponsor Geoffrey Robinson, then-chancellor Gordon Brown and another fallen newspaper tycoon, Conrad Black.
But if Bower seems entirely the wrong man to tackle a project to which the subject has given his full approval, do not be fooled.
When Ecclestone, who will be 80 later this month, gave Bower the go-ahead to speak to friends and business contacts, the author warned him not to expect a frothy tribute.  "I’ll accept your facilities, but if I find evidence of wrongdoing or hear any criticism, it will be published,” Bower told him.
Ecclestone replied “Tom, I’m no angel” and instructed everyone in his circle to “tell him the truth, good or bad.”
We should expect, then, that every story in Ecclestone’s journey from used car salesman to billionaire F1 boss -- his personal highs and lows, his marriages, his deals in Downing Street and his successes and failures on the track -- will be told in unpolished rawness.
If it makes Ecclestone look less than saintly at times, Bower’s subject is clearly prepared.  Indeed, as a figure who has not exactly shied away from notoriety, he may well enjoy seeing himself portrayed in that way.

Broken Dreams: Vanity, Greed and the Souring of British Football won the William Hill prize in 2003.

More books by Tom Bower

More books on Bernie Ecclestone

Home



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Leave a comment or submit your own sports book review

Popular posts from this blog

2018 Cross Sports Book of the Year Awards: all the winners are named

Brave Paralympian Martine Wright scoops Autobiography prize Add caption The inspiring story of the GB Paralympic athlete Martine Wright has been named Sports Autobiography of the Year at the 16th Sports Book Awards and will be a strong contender for overall Sports Book of the Year for 2018, which will be decided by a public vote. Written in collaboration with journalist Sue Mott, Unbroken , published by Simon & Schuster, tells the remarkable story of Martine’s incredible fight back from the horrors of the July 7 atrocities in London in 2005, when she was sharing a carriage on a tube train on the Circle Line with a suicide bomber, who detonated his device just outside Aldgate station. Seven passengers around her were killed among 52 who lost their lives that day but she survived, albeit at the cost of both her legs. Martine, who took up wheelchair tennis and sitting volleyball as part of her rehabilitation, represented Great Britain in the latter at the 2012 Paralympics...
19 comments
Read more

Secrets of Mickelson the Master

No instruction manual could teach a golfer to play the extraordinary trees-to-green shot that Phil Mickelson produced at the 13th on the way to winning his third US Masters in Augusta. There is much a player can learn, nonetheless, from the winner of the 2010 green jacket and his phenomenal skills with wedge and putter in Mickelson's Secrets of the Short Game , which can now expect a spike in sales. Mickelson believes that even a golfer of only average ability can become a highly effective short-game player by paying proper attention to mechanics and set-up and combining that scientific approach with a willingness to be imaginative. Published last autumn, the 224-page manual passes on some of the wisdom Mickelson has acquired over 35 years, since his first steps in the game as a small boy. By holding off Britain's Lee Westwood, Mickelson joined the company of Nick Faldo, Sam Snead and Gary Player in having won three Masters titles.  But for the presence of four-times win...
Post a Comment
Read more

No Nonsense: Joey Barton's autobiography on the William Hill Sports Book of the Year longlist after just one day in the shops

Joey Barton Controversial footballer Joey Barton's autobiography No Nonsense has been included on the longlist for the 2016 William Hill Sports Book of the Year even though it was published only yesterday. Written in collaboration with Michael Calvin, the award-winning author and sports journalist, Barton's book promises to deliver a candid account of a life never far from the headlines on and off the field. Calvin is the third writer to work with the player, who began the project in 2014 with Times journalist Matthew Syed and made one attempt to write it himself, which he did not sustain beyond nine chapters. There is much detail, some of it quite harrowing, about his upbringing in hard-edged working class Liverpool, where many of his associates and even family members were involved in crime at one level or another.  His brother, Michael, and his cousin, Paul Taylor, are serving jail sentences for the murder of an innocent black teenager. The book has no short...
18 comments
Read more