Dan Jones
Dan Jones Wrestles with Two Books on Fighting
The Last Wrestlers: A Far Flung Journey in Search of a Manly Art
By Marcus Trower
Ebury 387pp £10.99 order from our bookshop
Tent Boxing: An Australian Journey
By Wayne McLennan
Granta Books xxpp £11.99 order from our bookshop
The last live wrestling match I saw was at the Cambridge Corn Exchange in 2002. The highlight was a ‘Fatties Match’, in which three men with a combined weight of nearly 100 stone cavorted around the creaking ring. They were wearing leotards and tiny pairs of underpants, and performed numerous unlikely somersaults that did none of them much physical damage, but made a thunderous noise.
According to the chronology of Marcus Trower’s new book, The Last Wrestlers, while I was watching obese men tickle each other, he was in Nigeria, tracking down proper fighters. Trower regards modern Western wrestlers (from men like Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks, to the stars of the American WWE shows
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
‘Now, thirty years after the premiere of Bennett’s play, George may become Britain’s best-understood monarch, thanks to this impressive new biography.’
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-king-who-lost-america
‘Former miners often remember a world of discipline, danger and mutual loyalty. The terms in which they talk put one in mind of military veterans.’
Richard Vinen on the age of coal.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-miners-lament
*SPECIAL OCTOBER OFFER*
Subscribe or give a gift subscription to Literary Review, and we'll send you a free copy of 'A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth' by Henry Gee (@EndOfThePier).
Use the code VERYSHORT at checkout.
https://www.mymagazinesub.co.uk/literary-review/promo/veryshort/