The Bicycle Book
2011
First Published
3.78
Average Rating
327
Number of Pages
What could be simpler than a bicycle? And yet the bike—old, and cheap, and slightly comic—continues to inspire a passionate following. Since the millennium its use in Britain has doubled, and then doubled again. Thousands now cycle to work, and more take it up every day. In trial after trial, it is the bike which reaches its urban destination faster than the car, the bus, the underground or the pedestrian. Self-reliant and straightforward, cycling has recycled itself. It is an antiquated idea, and its time has finally come. But what is it about the bicycle that so enchants us? And why do its devotees become so obsessed with it? Acclaimed and prize-winning author Bella Bathurst takes us on a journey through cycling's best stories and strangest incarnations, from the bicycle as weapon of twentieth-century warfare to the secret life of couriers and the alchemy of framebuilding.Longlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award 2011.
Avg Rating
3.78
Number of Ratings
146
5 STARS
23%
4 STARS
40%
3 STARS
31%
2 STARS
7%
1 STARS
0%
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Author
Bella Bathurst
Author · 7 books
Bella Bathurst is a fiction and non-fiction writer, and photographer, born in London and living in Scotland. Her journalism has appeared in a variety of major publications, including the Washington Post and the Sunday Times. Her first published book was The Lighthouse Stevensons (1999), an account of the construction of the Scottish lighthouses by the ancestors of Robert Louis Stevenson, and named one of the List Magazine's '100 Best Scottish Books of all time'.
