Although this book scarcely pretends to be a work of scholarship, writing it has presented some interesting problems which, si parva componere magnis, echo those of more serious students. As I suggested in the Preface, the sources for the history of the Tour de France are exiguous, inaccessible, and largely corrupt. Plenty of popular books on the subject are riddled with error; and when three different, officially sanctioned reference works, the Tour Encyclopédie, the press office’s Histoire, and the Tour’s website, can’t agree on the number of entrants in the field one year, or on the spelling of a rider’s name, then it’s tempting to echo Sir Francis Hinsley in The Loved One – ‘I was always the most defatigable of hacks’ – and give up. Having nevertheless persevered, I wanted to suggest some idea of the books I had found most useful, with some suggestions for further reading. The place of publication is London unless otherwise specified.
Of reference books, the Tour Encyclopédie (6 vols, Ghent 1997–2002) is much the most detailed, giving the entrants each year listed by teams, the complete result of each stage run in each Tour, and the final times for all finishers. Another essential work – the Bible of the Tour, as it impiously if understandably calls itself – is Jean Nelissen’s De bijbl van de Tour de France (Amsterdam/Antwerp 1999). When the late Lord Rees-Mogg was Chairman of the Broadcasting Standards Council and custodian of national morals, he ruefully admitted that it might not be possible to prevent obscene films being transmitted from the Netherlands to England, ‘but at least they’ll be in Dutch’. Also ruefully, I compared this volume with inferior books which were at least in English, but it isn’t so difficult to make sense of elementary terms (gele trui is ‘yellow jersey’ and Tourwinnaar is ‘Tour winner’). The official Tour website www.letour.com is useful for checking the palmarès of individual riders, although like so many websites it isn’t inerrant. L’histoire, les archives, handed out each year as part of the Tour’s press pack, is also occasionally peccant, but well worth having. Tour de France 100 ans, ed. Gerard Enjès et al (3 vols, Paris 2002) is a magnificent production drawing on the incomparable resources, photographic and reportorial, of the Auto and then the Equipe. A single-volume selection has been published in English, The Official Tour de France Centennial (2003). There is also The Story of the Tour de France in two volumes, Volume 1: 1903–1964 by Bill McGann (2006) and Volume 2: 1965-2007 by Bill McGann and Carol McGann (2008). And The Tour de France . . . to the Bitter End, edited by Richard Nelsson and William Fotheringham (2012) is a collection from Guardian writers, of whom Richard Williams is in a class of his own. One other reference book which is very helpful s.v. ‘Cycling’, as well as in general, is the excellent Oxford Companion to Sports and Games.
As to general narratives, I enjoyed Le Tour: Histoire Complète by P. Portier (Paris 1950) covering the first half-century, for all that it’s written in a ripe vein of old-fashioned journalese, with its own sins of commission and omission (another defatigable hack, Portier will give a list of names, and add ‘d’autres encore que j’oublie’). The story is continued in Ici, 60 ans de Tour de France by Georges Briquet (Paris 1962) and more seriously in Le Tour de France et le vélo: histoire sociale d’une épopée contemporaine by Philippe Gaboriau (Paris 1995). The Tour de France by Peter Clifford (1965) is helpful if uninspired, and The Tour de France by R. C. Howard (1985) has some value. Then there is The Tour de France and its Heroes: a Celebration of the Greatest Race in the World by Graham Watson (1990), while both Le Tour: the Rise and Rise of the Tour de France by Geoffrey Nicholson (1991) and Inside the Tour de France by David Walsh (1994) are still more illuminating, as are Le Tour de France by Jacques Billardière (Paris 1994) and Le Mythe des géants de la route by Jacques Calvet (Grenoble n.d.). Several books worth having came out in the centennial year of 2003: Golden Stages of the Tour de France, eds. Richard Allchin and Adrian Bell; A Century of Cycling: The Classic Races and Legendary Champions by William Fotheringham; Le Tour: A Century of the Tour de France by Jeremy Whittle; The Yellow Jersey Companion to the Tour de France, ed. Les Woodland; and The Escape Artist by Matt Seaton. One other book is a classic, Tours de France: chroniques intégrales de ‘L’Equipe’ 1954–1982 by Antoine Blondin (Paris 2001), a wonderful collection from the greatest of Tour writers.
From a large if not always nourishing field of biographies and – usually ghostwritten – autobiographies, a selection may here be mentioned: Fausto Coppi: the True Story by Jean-Paul Ollivier, who is one of the best-known of French television commentators (trans. Richard Yates n.d.), Master Jacques: The Enigma of Jacques Anquetil by Richard Yates (2001), and Gloire sans le maillot jaune by Raymond Poulidor (Paris 1977). Put Me Back on My Bike: In Search of Tom Simpson by William Fotheringham (2002) is an admirable biography, and is supplemented by the excellent essay on Simpson and the Tour, originally published in the New Yorker, in Something to Declare by Julian Barnes (2002). There is much information in Eddy Merckx: the Greatest Cyclist of the 20th Century by Rik Vanwalleghem (trans. Steve Hawkins 2000), and Half Man, Half Bike: The Life of Eddy Merckx, Cycling’s Greatest Champion by William Fotheringham (2012). The subtitle of In Search of Robert Millar: Unravelling the Mystery Surrounding Britain’s Most Successful Tour de France Cyclist by Richard Moore (2008) is now, of course, obsolete. Then there are Induráin: a Tempered Passion by Javier Garcia Sanchez (trans. Jeremy Munday 2002), and Champion: Bicycle Racing in the Age of Induráin by Samuel Abt (1993). It’s Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life by Lance Armstrong with Sally Jenkins (2001) is now almost unbearable to read, but still retains interest as a monstrous catalogue of deception.
Of books about individual Tours, The Great Bike Race by Geoffrey Nicholson (1976) is a classic which illuminates much more than the one race it covers. Two more ‘one year’ books are Slaying the Badger: LeMond, Hinault and the Greatest Ever Tour de France by Richard Moore (2012) and 1988 Tour de France by Phil Liggett (1988). For the most notorious of all Tours, ten years later, In Pursuit of the Yellow Jersey: Bicycle Racing in the Year of the Tortured Tour by Samuel Abt and James Startt (San Francisco 1999) is a collection of dispatches. Abt has also published Tour de France: Three Weeks to Glory (1991). His 1998 book is notably more detached than Breaking the Chain: Drugs and Cycling: the True Story by Willy Voet (trans. William Fotheringham 2001) or Ma verité by Richard Virenque (Paris n.d.), both more interesting for what they don’t say than for what they do. A more specialized study about the political background of the 1948 Tour is Un grande trionfo al Tour de France e un attentato politico: due storie intrecciate nella storia d’Italia: Bartali and Togliatti by Paolo Facchinetti (Rome 1981). Two books by Graeme Fife, Tour de France: the History, the Legend, the Riders (1999) and Inside the Peloton (2001), enjoy the perspective of someone who has intrepidly climbed most of the cols on his own bike, and The Unknown Tour de France: the Many Faces of the World’s Biggest Bicycle Race by Les Woodland (2000) is an agreeable pot-pourri. I was unable to consult Wide-eyed and Legless: Inside the Tour de France by Jeff Connor (1988), but I like the title.
Since the second edition of this book in 2007, there has been no slackening of the output of books about cycling, cyclists and the Tour, and the fall of Armstrong has produced a literature all of its own. The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France by Tyler Hamilton and Daniel Coyle (2012) blew the gaff for good, even if Hamilton the delator scarcely comes out of his own story better than Armstrong whom he delates. Some of the truth about Armstrong had been told in LA Confidentiel by Pierre Ballester and David Walsh (Paris 2006) and Lance Armstrong’s War: One Man’s Battle Against Fate, Fame, Love, Death, Scandal, and a Few Other Rivals by Daniel Coyle (Jun 2005). Walsh finally told his story in Seven Deadly Sins: My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong (2012).
On a much happier note, Boy Racer by Mark Cavendish (2010) and My Time by Bradley Wiggins are what their fans expect. Cav also gives us Mapping Le Tour de France: 100 Tour de France race route maps, with photographs by Mark Cavendish and Ellis Bacon (2013). Sky’s the Limit: Wiggins and Cavendish: the Quest to Conquer the Tour de France by Richard Moore and 21 Days to Glory: The Official Team Sky Book of the 2012 Tour de France by Team Sky and Dave Brailsford (both 2012) tell of that glorious year. Several books come out this year to mark the hundredth race: Tour de France: 100th Race Anniversary Edition by Françoise Laget, Gilles Montgermont, Serge Laget and Philippe Cazab, Tour de France 100: A Photographic History of the World’s Greatest Race by Richard Moore, Tour de France: the Complete Illustrated History: The Complete History of the World’s Greatest Cycle Race by Marguerite Lazell.
My ‘Repos’ draw on Jules Michelet’s History of France, in the enjoyably fruity translation by G. H. Smith (1844–6). It’s striking that some much-praised histories of France in the twentieth century barely mention sport or the Tour, but two books I have particularly admired are by Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernisation of Rural France 1870–1914 (1997) and The Hollow Years: France in the 1930s (1995). I also profited by two remarkable essays, ‘Le Tour de France comme épopée’ by Roland Barthes in his Mythologies (Paris 1957, and not alas included in the English selection of the same title), and ‘Le Tour de France’ by Georges Vigarello in Les France (Paris 1992), volume III of the brilliant symposium Les Lieux de Mémoire, ed. Pierre Nora. John Ardagh’s Writer’s France (1989) is an engaging and handsome literary gazetteer by someone who knows and loves the country, while there are two most entertaining anthologies, A Bicyclette, ed. Edward Nye (Paris 2000), and Cycling, ed. Jeanne Mackenzie (Oxford 1981). Several films mentioned in the course of my story are worth listing again. Le Roi de la Pédale (1925) starred the popular actor Biscot; Pour le Maillot Jaune was made during the 1939 Tour starring Albert Préjean and Meg Lemonnier; La Cours en Tête (1974) is centred around Eddy Merckx; there are also For a Yellow Jersey written and directed by Claude Lelouch (1986) and most recently the witty cartoon Belleville Rendezvous (2003). And finally, a delicious CD of Tour songs, Le Vélo en Chansons 1927–1950.