Rugby is a sport that means different things to different people around the world. So when award-winning writer Donald McRae set off to take the pulse of the sport soon after the dawn of the professional era, he began to build a portrait of the game that highlighted the contrasts between nations, who may have been united in their love for rugby, but who saw it in very different ways.
Featuring in-depth interviews with a range of great players from around the world, including Sean Fitzpatrick, Francois Pienaar and Lawrence Dallaglio among others, Winter Coloursis a compelling account of the culture of rugby as seen by its biggest stars - men who also hold dear the sport's very traditions that make it so special. This is a remarkable piece of writing and is sure to be of interest to all who follow the sport at any level.
Donald McRae was born near Johannesburg in South Africa in 1961 and has been based in London since 1984.
He is the award-winning author of six non-fiction books which have featured legendary trial lawyers, heart surgeons and sporting icons. He is the only two-time winner of the UK’s prestigious William Hill Sports Book of the Year – an award won in the past by Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch and Laura Hillenbrand’s Sea Biscuit. As a journalist he has won the UK’s Sports Feature Writer of The Year – and was runner up in the 2008 UK Sports Writer of the Year – for his work in the Guardian.
Donald lived under apartheid for the first twenty-three years of his life. The impact of that experience has shaped much of his non-fiction writing. At the age of twenty-one he took up a full-time post as a teacher of English literature in Soweto. He worked in the black township for eighteen months until, in August 1984, he was forced to leave the country. He is currently writing a memoir based on these experiences.
A compelling and artful journey from South Africa, through New Zealand, France, England to the core od the sport where players are truly loving their trade. A must read for every one who enjoys rugby and for all who love true Passion on sports.