The Marvellous Mania

Although Alistair Cooke called golf 'a method of self-torture, disguised as a game', from the first time he swung a club at the age of fifty-five, he was hooked for the rest of his life. This book brings together the best of Cooke's writings about his greatest sporting passion, which display the incomparable wit, the unexpected insights, the mischievous charm, the elegance and enchantment which made him famous for over sixty years as a broadcaster. Whether he is writing about the pleasures of a bout in the snow, how the 'senior golfer' secretly disguises their ageing swing, Arnold Palmer playing in 102-degree heat in San Antonio, dapper Gary Player winning the U.S. Open at Creve Coeur, Missouri, or Jack Nicklaus playing - and winning - almost anywhere, (not to mention a surprising and persistent tendresse for Raquel Welch), Alistair Cooke on his favourite sport is a rare and constant pleasure.