Jul 15, 2022
Gavin Mairs is the award-winning Chief Rugby Correspondent for The Daily Telegraph, where he has worked since 2009. He has covered rugby union for over 20 years, including previously as rugby correspondent for the Belfast Telegraph and Yorkshire Post, and has reported from every World Cup and Five/Six Nations Championship since 1999 and every British and Irish Lions tour since 2001.
Gavin has co-authored four books, most recently the best-selling autobiography of Andy Farrell, former Wigan and Great Britain rugby league star and now Ireland rugby union and British and Irish Lions head coach, entitled ‘The Only Way I Know’, published by Penguin Sandycove, in October 2025. It has been shortlisted for the Sports Book of the Year at the 2025 Irish Book Awards.
Other books include Maggie Alphonsi’s autobiography called ‘Winning the Fight’, which was published by Polaris in August 2023 and was shortlisted for the Sports Book Awards Autobiography of the Year.
He also collaborated with Martin Bayfield, the former England and Lions forward and broadcaster and actor, on his autobiography called ‘A Very Tall Story’, published by Simon & Schuster in September 2022; and the autobiography of Rory Best, the former Ireland and British and Irish Lions captain, ‘Rory Best: My Autobiography’, published by Hodder & Stoughton in March 2020.
Gavin is a former winner of Sports Journalist of the Year award at the Northern Ireland Press and Broadcast awards and Sportswriter of the Year at the Yorkshire Press Awards.
He has been shortlisted eight times for Rugby Journalist of the Year at the Sports Journalists Association Awards and awarded silver in 2023.
X: @gavinmairs
Apr 26, 2021
Gabriele Marcotti is the World Football Correspondent for The Times and UK correspondent for Corriere dello Sport. He is also a columnist for Sports Illustrated and his work appears regularly in La Stampa and the Sunday Herald. He now co-hosts the weekly 606 programme on BBC Radio Five Live as well as being a regular pundit on the same channel. His books include The Italian Job: A Journey to the Heart of Two Great Footballing Cultures, co-written with Gianluca Vialli, which was shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award in 2006. His book Capello: Portrait of a Winner (Bantam Books), was described by Simon Kuper as ‘the book Marcotti was born to write’. Marcotti also co-authored with Alberto Polverosi a biography of Ranieri and Paolo Di Canio’s biography. Most recently, Marcotti worked with Gianluca Vialli on his personal and inspiring book, GOALS, which Headline published in June 2020. He lives in London.
Apr 26, 2021
Jane McLelland is the author of the international bestseller How To Starve Cancer Without Starving Yourself which she self-published in September 2018. The book has been translated into several languages and has proven to be a life-saver for thousands of people receiving treatment. Part memoir and part guide, Jane has developed a unique route map which shows which “fuel pipelines” feed every type of cancer. She is a living testament to the success of her protocol having survived Stage IV lung cancer. Jane is the mother of two boys and lives with her husband in West London
Apr 26, 2021
John McManus is a writer and academic based in Ankara, Turkey. He writes about the Middle East, sport, migration and popular culture, especially in Turkey and Qatar. He is the author of Welcome to Hell? In Search of the Real Turkish Football (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2018), awarded runner-up in the 2019 British-Kuwaiti Friendship Society book prize, the annual prize of the British Society of Middle East Studies. His writing has appeared in the Guardian, the Financial Times, the Washington Post and BBC, as well as academic journals. John holds a PhD in Anthropology from Oxford University. He is currently a visiting fellow at Qatar University Gulf Studies Center and an honorary research fellow at the British Institute at Ankara.
Website: www.johnmcmanus.co.uk
Twitter: @JohnMcManus06
Apr 26, 2021
Nigel Mitchell has a clinical and sport career spanning almost 20 years. At the 2008 Beijing Olympiad the Olympic British Cycling team became the most successful British Olympic team of all time. His role involves leading and providing specialist nutritional service to British Cycling. Additionally he has had previous responsibility for the development and quality assurance of performance nutrition services to sports in the north of England, this has included helping to establish performance nutrition services to the Royal Yacht Association and British Swimming. His title, Fuelling the Cycling Revolution: The Nutritional Strategies and Recipes Behind Grand Tour Wins and Olympic Gold Medals, was published in June 2017 (Bloomsbury).
Apr 26, 2021
James Montague is an award-winning author and journalist from Chelmsford, Essex. He has reported from over 100 countries and unrecognised territories for the BBC World Service, the New York Times, The Athletic and Delayed Gratification, amongst others. His latest book, Engulfed: How Saudi Arabia Bought Sport, and the World, was published in March 2025 and was shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year prize.
Known for his fearless reporting style, Montague cut his teeth on his first book – When Friday Comes about the place of football in the Middle East (Mainstream Books 2008, reprinted by deCoubertin books in 2011 and Ebury in 2022). It won him the “Best New Writer” award at the British Sports Book of the Year Awards. His next book, 31-Nil: On the Road with Football’s Outsiders (Bloomsbury) was a remarkable odyssey-like journey to discover the lengths to which players and teams would go to qualify for the World Cup. It included that now-legendary American Samoa team, now the subject of a film starring Michael Fassbender and Elisabeth Moss, and won the 2015 Football Book of the Year Award at the British Sports Book Awards.
His third book, The Billionaires’ Club (Bloomsbury) again won Football Book of the Year in 2018 whilst his fourth 1312: Among the Ultras – a journey with football’s most extreme fans (Ebury) was an international bestseller translated into eight languages.
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