Books by Tony Collins

Life is already difficult for a sixteen year old boy who is at least a lap behind his peers in the 1500 metre event at the Growing Up Olympics. But when his beloved Grandfather passes away, leaving a cryptic clue to the whereabouts of untold riches, the resultant road trip will increase the pace. Escaping the clutches of an over-protective mother, sexually deprived employer and a furious Asian funeral director, Felix Malholly makes his getaway. What follows is a journey involving diamond theft, grave robbery, surfing, terrifying pensioners, stand-up comedy, torture with a chain-saw and a whole lot of fun in between. If it happened to you, how rich would you feel?

Presenting a cultural history of drinking and sport, this work examines the roles masculinity, class and regional identity play in alcohol consumption at matches, races, courses and competitions. Offering a perspective on the culture and commerce of sporting events, it is aimed at cultural historians, anthropologists and sociologists.

In September 2013 Tony Collins took advantage of a long-overdue sabbatical to walk the 490 miles of the Camino, from the French border to Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain. For decades he had helped to provide the evangelical churches of the world with reading material. Now he was deliberately stepping out of his comfort zone: a pilgrimage, carrying his pack, through a land whose language he did not speak, into a religious culture far removed from his own, in search of sources of reverence. He would not walk alone: the Way has many adherents, well over 200,000 completing their Camino during that year. He had expected the Way to be arduous, and so it proved. But he had not expected so bracing an internal journey, his battered soul laid down for examination, past errors offered up for scrutiny. Nor had he expected such moments of intense spiritual encounter; nor so many precious friendships. He discovered, above all, as have many before him, that the Road leaves an indelible mark.

Looking at rugby in late Victorian and Edwardian England, this title examines how class conflict tore rugby apart and led to the creation of rugby league. It focuses on how men and women became involved in rugby and the hostile reaction to them from rugby's middle-class leaders, and describes how the war for rugby's soul led to the 1895 split.