LoveReading Says
May 2012 Travel Book of the Month.
A brilliant, charming, engaging look at the sometimes weird world of the bicycle and bicyclist. The people who ride them (including over water), the people who build them (the revered magicians), in fact a huge cast of colourful characters and stories. A must for any fan of pedal power.
LoveReading
Find This Book In
| Primary Genre |
Travel
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| Recommendations: |
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The Bicycle Book Synopsis
Two wheels. A frame. Two pedals.
What could be simpler than a bicycle? And yet the bike continues to inspire a passionate following. Since the millennium its use in Britain has doubled, and then doubled again.
Thousands now cycle to work, with more and more taking it up every day. Acclaimed author Bella Bathurst takes us on a journey through cycling's best stories and strangest incarnations, from the bicycle as a weapon of warfare to the secret life of couriers and the alchemy of framebuilding. With a cast of characters including the woman who watercycled across the Channel, the man who raced India's Deccan Queen train and several of today's top cyclists, she offers us a brilliantly engaging portrait of cycling's past, present and world-conquering future.
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9780007305896 |
| Publication date: |
26th April 2012 |
| Author: |
Bella Bathurst |
| Publisher: |
HarperPress an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| Pagination: |
306 pages |
| Primary Genre |
Travel
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| Recommendations: |
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Bella Bathurst Press Reviews
'You can keep the internet. You can keep the computer and the mobile phone. In the bicycle humanity has its most perfect invention of the last three hundred years and in Bella Bathurst the bike has found the best and brightest booster so far.' BORIS JOHNSON
'At last -- a bicycle book for the rest of us! a book for the sort of cyclist who likes cycling and reading and stories!' Guardian
'As this beautifully written and gently erudite work easily proves, cycling is ideal for many things, and will doubtless draw more converts to agree thatthere's no lovelier form of transport'. Sunday Times
'Four wheels not bad, two wheels much better!' Bella Bathurst is a devoted two-wheeler through urban and country landscapes. This is a lovely, lively, anecdotal anthology of good stories about cycling for the millions more who have taken it up for sport, fun, health and wealth since the turn of the century. Favourites here must be the free-wheeling interviews with bicycle couriers, feral cycling and -- for those unable to walk on water -- the art of water cycling.' The Times
'[Bella's] joyful freewheel through the world of bicycles and the people who ride them not only affirms her as an elegant chronicler of quirky subjects, but fills a gap in a pantheon of cycling literature! The Bicycle Book is unique in appealing to both cycling nuts and those of us who mean to dust off the flat-tyred two-wheeler' Economist
The bicycle is the most popular form of transport on the planet...With The Bicycle Book, Bathurst adds her voice to the call that we are now at the dawn of a new golden age of this versatile machine.'
Observer
'The freewheeling exhilaration of this jaunty compendium of adventures for cycling obsessives will convert any irreverence for ancient bicycles into respect for modern pedal-power.'
SAGA Magazine
About Bella Bathurst
Bella Bathurst is the author of The Lighthouse Stevensons, which won the Somerset Maugham Award, and of the novel Special. Her journalism has appeared in the Washington Post, the London Sunday Times, and other major periodicals. Born in London, she lives in Scotland.
Author photo © Ben Gilbert
More About Bella Bathurst
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