Throughout its chequered history, snooker has had more than its fair share of heroes and villains, champions and chumps, rascals and rip-off artists. In the last 20 years, every sleazy scandal imaginable has attached itself to this raffish sport: corruption, match fixing, bribery, sex, recreational drugs, performance-enhancing drugs, ballot rigging, fraud, theft, domestic violence, common-or-garden violence, paranoid politicking, dirty tricks - all against a background of inept petty tsars fixated on the pursuit, retention and abuse of power.
In Black Farce and Cue Ball Wizards, Clive Everton recounts the glory and despair, the dreams and disillusion, and the treachery and greed that have characterised the game since it was invented as an innocent diversion by British Army officers in India in the nineteenth century. He tells the true and unexpurgated tale of snooker's transformation into a television success story second only to football and exposes how its potential has been shamefully squandered.
Rezensionen / Stimmen
Revelatory stuff, masterfully written (Book of the Week) * Independent on Sunday * A terrific memoir-cum-history of the game . . . great matches are writ large but there is so much else. Fraud. Theft. Violence. In fighting. Back biting. Madness. -- Nick Harris * The Independent * An extraordinary tale of intrigue and perilous financial survival -- Donald Trelford * Daily Telegraph * My own surprise of the year: reading, spellbound, at one sitting an unputdownable 400-page revelation - on snooker -- Frank Keating * The Guardian * This expose of the game's development and its somewhat Machiavellian underbelly is written with authority by esteemed commentator Clive Everton * Publishing News * The use of Clive Everton to present this insider's look at snooker's underbelly should ensure this is first choice of any snooker fan * The Bookseller *
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ISBN-13
978-1-78057-399-1 (9781780573991)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Clive Everton is the BBC's senior snooker commentator. As the sport's leading journalist, he has published and edited Snooker Scene magazine since 1971 and has been snooker correspondent for The Guardian since 1976. He lives in Birmingham.
