Awards

• Short-listed for Telegraph Sports Book Awards 2019 (UK)

Overview

The Paris-Roubaix Classic. 273 kilometres of torment across the bone-crunching pavé of northern France. In 1976 the celebrated Danish film director, Jørgen Leth, embarked on an ambitious project to capture the spirit of this spectacular and cruel one-day race. The resulting film, A Sunday in Hell, has become the most admired cycling documentary of all time, and its revolutionary camera and sound techniques have forever changed the way the sport is viewed on screen. The film centres around legends including Eddie Merkx, Roger De Vlaeminck, Freddie Maertens and Francesco Moser, capturing not just their experiences from the saddle, but also the mood of a nation and its relationship with the most punishing of the Spring Classics. Sunday in Hell looks at the men, the method and the places behind the film. It observes the creativity of Leth and his collaborators, explores the lives of riders such as unlikely winner Marc Demeyer and revisits locations which have changed little to this day.

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9780224092036

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Reviews

William Fotheringham... Can legitimately stake a claim to being the Bard of the Bike, the most prolific and mythic of cycling writers, the Ernest Hemingway of two wheels. -- Andy Martin * Independent * There are few finer scribes on the subject in this country than William Fotheringham. -- Karl Hornsey * On: Yorkshire Magazine * Arguably the best film ever made about professional cycling. * Peter Cowie, International Film Guide * You can see every bead of sweat on the cyclists and every smashed-up ankle. It really makes you never want to get on a bike again. But it is an amazing film. * Nick Fraser, BBC commissioning editor *

William Fotheringham… Can legitimately stake a claim to being the Bard of the Bike, the most prolific and mythic of cycling writers, the Ernest Hemingway of two wheels. -- Andy Martin * Independent * There are few finer scribes on the subject in this country than William Fotheringham. -- Karl Hornsey * On: Yorkshire Magazine * Arguably the best film ever made about professional cycling. * Peter Cowie, International Film Guide * You can see every bead of sweat on the cyclists and every smashed-up ankle. It really makes you never want to get on a bike again. But it is an amazing film. * Nick Fraser, BBC commissioning editor *

Author Information

William Fotheringham is the number-one bestselling author of Merckx: Half Man, Half Bike. He writes for the Guardian and Observer on cycling and rugby and is the critically lauded author of Fallen Angel, Roule Britannia, and Put Me Back on My Bike, which Vélo magazine called `the best cycling biography ever written’. A racing cyclist and launch editor of Procycling and Cycle Sport magazines, he has reported on over twenty Tours de France.

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