Dalton’s millions

This year’s Sportsbook of the Year is Unforgivable Blackness (Pimlico)

This year’s Sportsbook of the Year is Unforgivable Blackness (Pimlico), a vividly enlightening new biog of Jack Johnson, the first black American boxing champion, by Geoffrey C. Ward, the US hist-orian who pockets the £18,000 prize plus a £2,000 free bet with the award’s loyal sponsor, bookmaker William Hill. White society was outraged at the boxer’s insolence, skill and, in particular, his success with white women. Closer to home, for a festive read inducing a more cuddly reverie, can I recommend British provincial nostalgia with less of a bitter edge? I guarantee middling-oldies of a certain bent will grab the port, nuts and a quiet corner in which to wallow in The Best of Charles Buchan’s Football Monthly (ed. Simon Inglis, English Heritage, £16.99) and the estimable Brendan Gallagher’s Sporting Supermen: The True Stories of Our Childhood Comic Heroes (Aurum, £12.99), i.e., Alf Tupper, Roy of the Rovers, the immortal Wilson, plus full supporting cast.

Charles Buchan was a barnstorming Arsenal and England centre-forward of the 1930s who turned journalist and launched his perkily populist, sometimes earnestly concerned Monthly in 1951. In no time it was selling 250,000 and for 20 years it gravely chewed over topics of the time: why was the overrated England team so hopeless? Were referees up to the job? Were our top players spoiled and overpaid? Would television overkill wreck the game? Would money ruin football’s integrity? As for this new breed of broadcasters who, by addressing footballers by their Christian names, were ‘introducing an unwelcome touch of effeminacy to the game’. Great stuff. Not, mind you, for our rugger-mad monks at my Douai, who considered Charlie’s Monthly to be heathen contraband; but Rover, Hotspur and Wizard were just about okay, so Sporting Supermen strikes more chords: I was a Wizard chap — ah, ageless, incompar-able Wilson, Braddock VC, Cannonball Kidd, Baldy Hogan, ‘Tough of the Track’ Tupper, and footballer-shepherd Limpalong Leslie.