Lest we forget: he is usually the one who confuses the dates of everyone’s birthday but he probably taught you how to swim and fixed your bike, made the tree house, and cheered the loudest on sports day even if it was your mother who worked through the night to do the science project you left to the last minute. Socks are always welcome at Christmas but boring in the summer; no one really likes aftershave; and there is no point in buying him moisturiser because no matter how manly the package looks he won’t use it, and you can’t improve his golf swing or his singing voice. He already has Gladiator on DVD, and that spare one he keeps for emergencies, but you still have that book token that you lost ages ago but have just found, so here are some ideas as Father’s Day is on Sunday and all is not lost.
McCoy: The Complete Story by Tony McCoy, edited by Brough Scott
Tony McCoy is a racing visionary who went to bed hungry and woke up each morning worrying more about his weight than many a top model; keeping his down to almost two stone lighter than it should have been. Born in Moneyglass, Co Antrim, the 20-time champion jump jockey rode 4,357 winners, including two Cheltenham Gold Cups and, at his 15th attempt, the remorseless Grand National on the JP McManus Jonjo O’Neil-trained Don’t Push It in 2010.
But McCoy always pushed it, what a career! This book updates the previous two and also includes Racing Post archive material, including race reports and action shots. McCoy dominated a magnificent if deeply ambivalent sport which inspires legends, joy and its share of tragedy. On his retirement in May at 41, he said: “I feel I’ve lived the dream. I couldn’t do anything more in my life. I’ve been so blessed, I wish I could do it all again.” JP McManus summed it up, saying that McCoy was respected by everyone in the sport: the trainers, the owners, the fans, the officials. Norman Mailer famously called one of his novels Tough Guys Don’t Dance but even the toughest tough guy, McCoy, wept when Synchronised, the horse he rode to his second Cheltenham Gold Cup, died five weeks later at Aintree, having unseated McCoy and having acted oddly before the Grand National, as if it sensed the coming disaster. McCoy never forgot the horse and mentioned him during all the fuss of retirement celebrations. He showed his human side. Fathers around Ireland will love this book – nudge, nudge, you have been advised.
Cold Blood by Richard Kerridge
It is not about the political opportunists who tell us how to live modestly while they enjoy holiday homes and up to three state pensions. This is a lively account of a life spent observing the world of nonhuman reptiles and amphibians. Everything your father might wish to know about the great crested newt, grass snakes and much else lurks and slithers within the pages – let’s hear it now for the common toad.
The Snow Geese by William Fiennes
On its first publication in 2002, this account of a personal odyssey, inspired by about as many things as one man’s head can contain after an illness, entranced a generation of readers. It is as if Fiennes set out to explore a contemporary response to the daring expeditions of old. Recalling a book he once read as a boy, he set off for Texas to follow the flock of about a million snow geese preparing for their ritual spring flight across thousands of miles to the Arctic tundra. It is a book which opens the mind and inspires the soul; your father will love it.
Siegfried Sassoon – Soldier, Poet, Lover, Friend – A Life by Jean Moorcroft
Biographies can be difficult and at times appear to fall into two distinct groups: those written by fans and those written by the righteous, intent on settling scores. There is, of course, an even worse variety, the ones which leave the impression that the biographer appears to think that he or she inhabits the subject’s mind. This is a wonderful book, though. Sassoon lived in strange and shocking times, he served in the Great War and went out in the belief it was a marvellous thing. Very quickly he changed his mind and described the horrors and most of the callous rhetoric of the men who stayed behind and choreographed the slaughter from the safety of offices.
Now All Roads Lead To France – The Last Years of Edward Thomas by Matthew Hollis
Another war poet takes centre stage in this magnificent evocation of a doomed generation. Unlike Sassoon, who admittedly never recovered from his wartime suffering, Edward Thomas died at the Front in surreal circumstances while lighting a cigarette on Easter Monday 1917. Although the shell that killed him never touched him, its speed of flight stopped his heart.
In These Times – Living in Britain Through Napoleon’s Wars, 1793-1815 by Jenny Uglow
In this, the 200th anniversary year of the Battle of Waterloo, Jenny Uglow, the social historian blessed with an artist’s flair, evokes the world of the years during which Napoleon affected Europe in a chilling way, prophetic of the catastrophic scythe Hitler would wield the following century.
Mercator – The Man Who Mapped the World by Nicholas Crane
Born in the age of discovery, Mercator was the greatest of the cartographers who helped explain the way in which the world is constructed. Imprisoned by the Inquisition – what great mind then alive wasn’t? – he was the man who devised the famous projection which revolutionised navigation.
The Reckoning – the Murder of Christopher Marlowe by Charles Nicholl
It is not necessary to be a devotee of Elizabethan drama to enjoy this pacey thriller, which investigates the events which led to the playwright’s murder during a brawl over a bill, the reckoning, in a tavern in 1593. Nicholl exposes the Elizabethan world of crime in which Marlowe, an artist and a spy, moved, always facing the menace of charges of heresy and homosexuality. Dark and tense, it is a narrative worthy of the most intrepid of thriller writers.
The Byerley Turk – The True Story of the First Thoroughbred by Jeremy James
Adventure seldom comes as rich as this; a bay colt is foaled in 1678 somewhere in the Balkans. As a five-year-old he is in the service of the Sultan and sees action as a charger in the Siege of Vienna. Three years later he is on the losing side and is taken as a spoil of war at the Siege of Buda. Then he is ridden across Europe and acquired by a superior horseman, Captain Robert Byerley, and takes part in the Battle of the Boyne. Before that, though, there is the business of winning a race at Down Royal. Few superheroes compare with this horse that became the first foundation sire of the thoroughbred line. He died at 25 in 1703.
Eyrie by TimWinton
Tom Keely has suffered a staggering reversal of fortune and his life begins to unravel. He is an ecological campaigner and none too popular. He is holed up in a messy apartment, his wife has left him and his mind is ready to explode. There is also a time bomb in his body. A clock is ticking. Australian TimWinton is a natural storyteller with sufficient empathy to save the world. As great reads go, this is a tremendously moving one.
The Fly Trap by Fredrick Sjöberg
“There are only three subjects: love, death and flies,” announced Augusto Monterroso. Well, that’s one way of looking at things. Sjöberg seems to have cracked existence. He lives on a Swedish island and observes the natural world, particularly hoverflies, with civilised measures of curiosity and respect – in our current age of stress and aggression, this delightful narrative will ease the mind and probably confer the energy and peace of mind needed to paint the house or at the very least, salvage the neglected wilderness formerly known as the back garden….
