Description
Inspired by the lyrical, mythic mode of Italian sports journalism from the 1930s to the 1950s, Viva Bartali! is a biography-in-verse of the iconic Italian cyclist Gino Bartali (1914-2000), two-time winner of the Tour de France (1938, 1948), known both as ‘Gino the Pious’ because of his fervent Catholic faith, and as Ginettaccio (‘Gino the Terrible’), owing to the short shrift he so often gave the Press.
The collection gives us an insight into the complex relationship that underpinned his great rivalry with the campionissimo (‘champion of champions’) Fausto Coppi – the ‘man of glass’ against Bartali’s ‘man of iron’. It was a rivalry that a divided a nation and defined a sport.







The Tragic Death of Eleanor Marx
Centres of Cataclysm
The Handle of the Door
The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova
Slipping the Leash
New and Selected Poems. Volume One
Floss
Winter Tales
Poems
Brief Lives