Alone The Triumph and Tragedy of John Curry Synopsis
Shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award 2014.
Curry had changed ice skating from marginal sport to high art. And yet the man was - and would always remain - an absolute mystery to a world that had been dazzled by his gift. Surely, men's skating was supposed to be Cossack-muscular, not sensual and ambiguous like this. Curry himself was an often-tortured man of labyrinthine complexity. For the first time, Alone untangles the extraordinary web of his toxic, troubled, brilliant - and short - life. It is a story of childhood nightmares, furious ambition, sporting genius, lifelong rivalries, homophobia, Cold War politics, financial ruin and deep personal tragedy. Alone reveals the restless, impatient, often dark soul of a man whose words could lacerate, whose skating invariably moved audiences to tears, and who - after succumbing to AIDS, as so many of his fellow artists and friends did - died of a heart attack aged just 44.
A terrific story - a comic strip hero made flesh, with all the human complications that entails - Daily Mail on The Ghost Runner
Bill Jones used to make documentaries, and he retains that discipline's eye for telling details and evocative shots - The Times on the Ghostrunner
A fantastic story of the underdog - Metro on The Ghost Runner
Author
About Bill Jones
Bill Jones started his working life as a journalist with various Northern provincial newspapers. In the early 80s he joined Granada Television in Manchester where he worked on literally hundreds of documentaries for the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and many others - including an award-winning film about the contents of Frank Sinatra's coffin - before embarking on a writing career after almost three decades in broadcasting. His first book - The Ghost Runner - won him The Times Best New Writer in the 2012 British Sports Book Awards. It was also shortlisted for the William Hill award. Alone is his second book. Born in Bridlington, the author currently lives in Ampleforth, North Yorkshire, where - despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary - he insists that his ancestry is Welsh.
