"God answers my prayers everywhere except on the golf-course."
Complete Surrender
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Complete Surrender, Julian Wilson, Monarch, 1996. (157 pages - 12 Pages of photos) ISBN 1 85424 348 9
The significance of Eric Liddell is well summed up in the following quotation from Sir David Puttnam: "Few lives have more to teach us about the virtues of honour and probity as the guiding principles for a practical code of ethics. That's why long after the names of most of the current band of sporting heroes have sunk into obscurity, it my belief that the memory of Eric Liddell is likely to endure. It will ensure as a monument to the integrity of a man who no matter what temptations might have been strewn in his path, always steered his life by that special interior with which he was blessed". (Page 11)
Wilson refers to James Liddell becoming a missionary as "a higher calling" (Page 18) and "a more spiritual vocation". (Page 19) Understanding James Liddell's presuppositions and how they would have impacted Eric is helpful to the modern reader.
Wilson quotes an interesting perspective on Liddell's motivation as an athlete, "I wasn't running for Scotland. The Olympics are not like that. We've had enough of struggles between nations. They are individual events to find out who is best in his particular event. I ran for myself to prove that I was the best in my event." and added "strangely, Liddell made no mention of running for the glory of God as he had so often throughout his career". (Page 65)
He also shows that Eric never lost his competitiveness. In the prison camp, Kenneth McAll invited Eric to go for a jog with him. Eric declined saying "when I run, I run to win. I will never jog, but I will go for a stroll". (Page 109)
A good book but not one of my top three on Liddell.