Gordon Forbes Bücher

'Our lunches have become tradition. We take our places, pullovers guarding against draughts, pills taken - some to prevent things happening, others to make things happen. We've all had modest beginnings, fought the good fight, had hopes, dreams, good line-calls and bad ones, always kept a best foot forward. But as James recently remarked, the older one gets, the more one's feet look alike so that if he could get one to go forward, either would do...' I'll Take the Sunny Side is a memoir about many things - tennis, friendship, storytelling and growing older. Gordon Forbes, acclaimed author of A Handful of Summers and Too Soon to Panic, has joined seven friends for the seniors' lunch in the Rainbow Room at the Country Club for several years. They are a group of learned men, writers, scholars and ex-editors, this book arises from their meandering conversations. You might know some of the table: James, the born humourist; Mark, the headmaster; Tim and Charles, the historians; two Peters who have edited newspapers; Richard, an author and editor; and Gordon, the tennis player. Join them as they debate politics, books and sport in particular. Is television affecting the antics of modern sportsmen? How many oysters is enough to make a difference? What has happened to tennis, has the nobility of the game gone for good?

From beginnings on a gravel court on a farm in rural South Africa, Gordon Forbes went on to travel the world with his long-time tennis partner Abe Segal during the late 1950s and early 60s: the glory days of Fred Perry, Roy Emerson and Virginia Wade. In this delightful insider's account of tennis on the international circuit, Forbes looks back with laughter at his tennis playing years through a varied, successful and often outrageous career on the world's courts. This newly published edition of A Handful of Summers brings back a cult classic, revealing an era populated by the most colourful tennis players of all time. More about the hilarious escapades of players than the game itself, the book begins with a short series of vignettes from Forbes's childhood on an Eastern Cape farm in South Africa, then takes the reader on a tennis tour - into locker rooms and restaurants, narrow streets and small hotels, and onwards to the lawns of Wimbledon and the caramel coloured clays of Roland Garros. A player of international repute, Gordon Forbes has managed to capture the irresistible charm of an era while telling the story of a young man striving to follow signposts on the winding roads of life. This is the first of Forbes's memoirs, followed by Too Soon to Panic and I'll Take the Sunny Side. With an original Foreword by Peter Ustinov.