Winter Colours: Changing Seasons in World Rugby

by Donald McRae

This volume explores how rugby is played and revered in different countries and cultures. It unfolds in the space of two years, from September 1996 to August 1998, as McRae travels across the hemispheres, moving from Britain and France to the New World, comparing the game at club, provincial, and national levels. It begins in the South Africa of McRae's youth where rugby was a byword for Apartheid. It covers the tours of the All Blacks and The British Lions in the "new" South Africa, crosses France, Britain, and Ireland in the company of the Springboks and Wallabies, and ends up in New Zealand and Australia with the English and Welsh teams.

387 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

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.

Reviews

[Maciej Kuźmicz · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.