by Bruce Melrose | Jun 22, 2021
The Slummer: Quarters Till Death by Geoffrey Simpson © 2021, BarkingBox Press, 364 Pages. In my youth, during the 80’s, working a summer job as a hospital orderly, in our moments of respite, we’d sit and flick through a pile of well-read magazines waiting for the next...
by Bruce Melrose | Apr 18, 2020
Scottie by Norman Harris © 2008 Last Side Publishing 170 pages Along with Garth Gilmour, Norman Harris has a special place in New Zealand sports journalism as a prolific author of running books including, but not limited, to The Legend of Lovelock, Lap of Honour, The...
by Bruce Melrose | Jul 31, 2019
James McNeish © 1986 Random House 495 pages. Of all New Zealand’s 1500m heroes, none has been more explored than Jack Lovelock, the 1936 Olympic Champion. Given the backdrop of his greatest athletic achievement in Berlin – 3 years prior to the outbreak of...
by Bruce Melrose | Apr 2, 2019
Brian Glanville © 1969 Faber & Faber 318 pages I FIRST READ The Olympian when I was a teen with a love of athletics and fiction. 40 years later, reading the novel again this week was as exciting as the day I first discovered an old pan paperback copy in a second...
by Bruce Melrose | Jan 15, 2019
This summer I treated myself to a volume of The Best of The Tough of The Track comic strips that once appeared in the British magazine for boys called Victor. For those unfamiliar with Victor it was a weekly comic paper published weekly from the 1960’s through to...
