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"Football is not a matter of life and death, it is more important than that."

Bill Shankly, Liverpool Football manager

Chariots return

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Mark Ryan, Keep It Real Publishing, 2024 ISBN 978-1-7396052-1-6

This is the 13th book on Eric Liddell which I have reviewed and I'm therefore writing a review in terms of what this book adds to previously published biographies. This one certainly sits alongside DP Thompson, McCasland, Keddie and Hamilton as the most significant books on Liddell. The full list of books and my reviews can be found at

Eric Liddell books

The much used Eric Liddell quote “God made me for a purpose - for China - but he also made me fast and when I run I feel his pleasure” was written by Chariots of Fire scriptwriter, Colin Welland. I have a letter from him saying so! The unanswered question is whether it represented what Liddell felt and whether he really bought into China being his destiny as strongly as the quote suggests.

Ryan says that Liddell often told friends “God made me for China” and as young as 8 or 9 told friends he was going to become a missionary in China. Ryan’s book is not a scholarly book and no source of these quotations is given.

Ryan seemed to grasp the real Eric noting that understanding that he was accepted and loved by God gave him a freedom to run very competitively but also to accept that losing a race had no lasting significance.

Another of the film's brilliant quotes is Abrahams fretting before the Olympic 100 metre final which he expressed as “10 lonely seconds to justify my existence”. Who knows what he was thinking an hour before the race but the book suggests that he had gone to Paris with little expectation that he could beat the four top Americans and that only after the semi-final in which he had run faster than any of them did he contemplate winning. The contradiction in that is that he had spent the previous year training with a professional coach to win that very Olympic title that he allegedly thought he had no chance to win.

The book gives some explanation of why it was not feasible for Eric to compete in the 1928 Olympics and also describes him discovering that some French and Japanese Olympians were coming to compete in the South Manchurian games. He entered and beat them all, winning the 200 and 400. Ryan suggests that with proper training, Eric could have won the 1928 Olympics.

I found it an enjoyable book perhaps 100 pages too long with too much detail of Harold Abrahams’ life after athletics in which, sadly he became “the mirror image of the very things he had once opposed. He became the establishment”.

The book also gives an interesting insight into the process which led to the film Chariots of Fire.



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