The Last Bell
Life, Death and Boxing
Published on 13. March 2025
480 pages
978-1-3985-0419-6 (ISBN)
Description
Winner of the Pinsent Masons Sports Writing Award at the Charles Tyrwhitt Sports Book Awards 2026
Shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2025
'Thoroughly encapsulates the current state of the hurt business' Telegraph, Best Books of 2025
For fifty years Donald McRae has followed boxing. As criminality and corruption spread, his love for the sport dimmed. In 2018, grieving his sister's death and his parents' illness, he turned back to boxing ? just as Tyson Fury's improbable resurrection proved the ring could still offer redemption.
McRae takes us close to champions including Fury, Canelo Álvarez, Katie Taylor and Oleksandr Usyk. He doesn't shy away from exploring huge themes ? doping, state repression, war ? and he doesn't flinch from recording the thudding hits or the heartbreak a fighter feels in defeat. And in telling the devastating story of Patrick Day, he confronts death in the ring.
The Last Bell is McRae's most personal and unflinching book, a clear-eyed reckoning with life and the sport he can't let go.
'Exhilarating and terrifying' Herald
Shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2025
'Thoroughly encapsulates the current state of the hurt business' Telegraph, Best Books of 2025
For fifty years Donald McRae has followed boxing. As criminality and corruption spread, his love for the sport dimmed. In 2018, grieving his sister's death and his parents' illness, he turned back to boxing ? just as Tyson Fury's improbable resurrection proved the ring could still offer redemption.
McRae takes us close to champions including Fury, Canelo Álvarez, Katie Taylor and Oleksandr Usyk. He doesn't shy away from exploring huge themes ? doping, state repression, war ? and he doesn't flinch from recording the thudding hits or the heartbreak a fighter feels in defeat. And in telling the devastating story of Patrick Day, he confronts death in the ring.
The Last Bell is McRae's most personal and unflinching book, a clear-eyed reckoning with life and the sport he can't let go.
'Exhilarating and terrifying' Herald
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Other editions
Additional editions
Book
03/2026
Simon & Schuster Ltd
€16.50
Shipment within 10-20 days
Book
03/2025
Simon & Schuster Ltd
€31.50
Shipment within 10-20 days
Person
Donald McRae is an award-winning author of fourteen non-fiction books which have featured sporting icons, legendary trial lawyers, heart surgeons and South Africa. He has twice won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year ? the UK's most prestigious sports book prize ? and ten national awards for his journalism at the Guardian.
