A scrap of newsreel film, a century old and two and a half minutes long, sweeps Ned Boulting back not just into the world of a forgotten hero of the Tour de France but into the forces that shaped that world: a collision of sport, war, family and destiny. There’s also a healthy dose of genealogy that would make for a great spin-off of the Who Do You Think You Are? Ein Guthaben pro Monat, einlösbar für einen beliebigen Titel, den du herunterladen und auch nach deiner Kündigung behalten kannst. Biography: Ned Boulting is the UK's best known voice of cycling - he commentates on the Tour de France for ITV, and all other major cycling races.

It sets him off in fascinating directions, encompassing travelogue, history, mystery story - to explain, to go deeper into this moment in time, captured on his little film. Théo Beeckman had been a month old when, in December 1896, there was a particularly riotous theatrical evening staged at the Nouveau-Théâtre on the Rue Blanche in Paris. I can’t recommend 1923: The Mystery of Lot 212 and a Tour de France Obsession highly enough, it’s a truly addictive read that could easily be polished off in one sitting. To add injury to insult, he also broke his arm and was left in a deskbound state, mourning the general shutdown.

Ned's captivating book explores one man's obsession with this magnificent event and casts an intriguing light on a tiny fragment of a race long gone by ― Alexei Sayle. A WATERSTONES BEST BOOK OF 2023: SPORT LONGLISTED FOR THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023 'An absorbing mix of historical sleuthing and travel writing' The Telegraph '[a] fascinating and often touching book… Wonderful' The Times The story of an obsession.

When he is finally able to talk to Beeckman’s granddaughter and outline what he’s found out, he touches on his motivations: “To be the gatekeeper to so much information was both a responsibility and an honour.Boulting spends the years of the Covid shut down tracking down information about the 1923 Tour but also the identity of the riders who are on the film. The rider Theophile Beekman (he had multiple spellings of his name) was just one of those riders who never won the race but did win a couple of stages and finished at respectable times. This is not necessarily the author’s fault; he could have done with a more stringent editor to cut the slightly cringey scenes. The result is that rare creature, an introspective page-turner; but it is also a romantic quest if ever there was one – imagine Don Quixote minus the slapstick (guest-star: Sarah Bernhardt as the love interest Dulcinea) – drawing extensively on those great events, reflecting the tensions and prejudices of that turbulent interwar period (so unlike our own! As Boulting explains, the Tour de France was – at the time of his film – aptly named, taking in more than 4,000km of French terrain and ­lasting a month.