Lester: the Official Biography of Lester Piggott

This is a biography of one of the most enigmatic British sportsmen of our time. A star for over 40 years on the race-track, Lester Piggott is great and flawed in perhaps equal measure. The story moves from the bleak atmosphere of Piggott's formative years, through the troubled Fifties when he was the despised boy genius, to the glorious Sixties and Seventies when he won the great prizes on horses such as Nijinsky, Sir Ivor and Roberto. At his peak, he was vindicated and rich beyond his childhood dreams. Yet behind the stoic face, he remained a driven man: he hoarded money, coveted and stole other jockeys' rides. The hero of the race-track was in real life clinically sick, a miser and a kleptomaniac. After a long battle with tax inspectors, Piggott was sentenced to three years in prison in October 1987. Disgraced, it seemed that he was finished, but he emerged from prison to defy the world yet again; he returned to the track and added further to his record list of Classic winners. At times a hero, then again the antithesis of all that is moral and noble, this defiant genius remains intriguing and largely unknown.
Eamon Dunphy has talked to sources who are prepared to tell of their professional and personal involvement with Piggott - even those with whom he has been most intimately associated bear the scars of the hurt he has inflicted upon them. The book has been written for anybody interested in sport, popular English culture or human nature.