Alone: The Triumph and Tragedy of John Curry

Bill Jones

jul 2014 · A&C Black

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The previously-untold story of the life and tragic early death of John Curry, one of the most famous ice skaters in history.

The book that inspired new film The Ice King, the story of John Curry's life.

One winter's night in 1976, over 20 million people in Britain watched John Curry skate to Olympic gold on an ice rink in Austria. Many millions more watched around the world. Overnight he became one of the most famous men on the planet. He was awarded an OBE. He was chosen as BBC Sports Personality of the Year.

Curry changed ice skating from marginal sport to high art. And yet the man was a mystery to a world that had been dazzled by his gift. Surely, men's skating was supposed to be Cossack-muscular, not sensual and ambiguous like this?

Curry himself was a complex, tortured man. For the first time, Alone untangles the extraordinary web of his toxic, troubled, brilliant and short life. It is a story of childhood nightmares, furious ambition, sporting genius, lifelong rivalries, homophobia, Cold War politics, financial ruin and deep personal tragedy.

So much more than a sports biography, Alone reveals the restless, impatient, often dark soul of a man whose words could lacerate, whose skating invariably moved audiences to tears, and who after succumbing to AIDS, as so many of his fellow artists and friends did, died of a heart attack aged just 44.

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Bill Jones has spent most of his working life making award-winning international documentaries with Granada Television in Manchester. In 2011, his first book The Ghost Runner – a biography of John Tarrant – was published to widespread critical acclaim. It was shortlisted for the William Hill Sport Book of the Year, and won the 'Best New Writer' category at the British Sports Book Awards. He lives in the North of England.