My Sporting Life

’Like my father before me, I believe that both the playing and watching of sport can teach us important lessons about ourselves by providing practical instruction in co-operation, tests of resolve and temper’

Michael Parkinson was destined to spend his life in sport. Introduced at a young age to cricket and football by his father, he rose through the ranks of Barnsley cricket alongside Dickie Bird and Geoffrey Boycott. But while they went on to find fame on the field, he found a career watching, writing and talking about sport.

My Sporting Life is Sir Michael’s love letter to sport, to the heroes and legends of his Yorkshire youth, to the characters of the international games he watched and wrote about, and to the very idea of sport itself. With warm, humorous anecdotes about many icons of sport, from Shane Warne to George Best and Muhammad Ali to Fred Trueman, Sir Michael Parkinson reflects on his life writing about his one great passion.

Born in Yorkshire, Michael Parkinson left school at sixteen with the ambition to play cricket for Yorkshire and England and to write about cricket for the Manchester Guardian. Although, he didn’t manage to fulfil the first half of his ambition, he has since become one of the most successful journalists of his generation. He wrote a sports column for The Sunday Times for fifteen years and has also written for the Telegraph. He is also a legendary TV and radio presenter - his long-running chat show Parkinson was hugely popular for many years.