The Wind At My Back - A Cycling Life

In this deeply personal and lyrical exploration of what it means to ride a bicycle, Paul Maunder explores how our memories have a dialogue with landscape and how cycling and creativity are connected. Taking a journey through the places that have shaped him, we ride across wild moorland, through suburbia and city streets, into quintessentially English pastoral scenes. We see too some of the darker parts of the British countryside, sites of great secrecy that intrigue the imagination. This is a book about how landscape can sustain us, and how even an hour's escape can inspire our creative sides. The bicycle allows us to explore and dream, and return in time for dinner.

About the author

Ever since seeing flickering coverage of the 1984 World Road Championships from Barcelona, Paul Maunder has loved all aspects of cycle racing. He won his first race – an Under-12s cyclocross around a farmyard near Oxford, for which he won three chocolate bars – but thereafter struggled to maintain such dominance. He has studied fiction with the former Poet Laureate, been awarded a fellowship by Faber, and is a regular feature contributor to Rouleur and Peloton magazines.

Product details

• Authors: Paul Maunder, Maunder Paul
• Publisher: Bloomsbury
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 31.05.2019
• EAN: 9781472948151
• ISBN: 978-1-4729-4815-1
• No. of pages: 272
• Dimensions: 130 mm x 200 mm x 17 mm
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature > Letters, diaries; Guides > Sport; Memoirs, TRAVEL / Special Interest / Bicycling, TRAVEL / Europe / Great Britain, NATURE / Regional, natural history, Cycling: general and touring