A branch of the late Peter Alliss’ fan club gathered last Thursday, at a golf club appropriately enough. This small but distinguished throng of his friends and colleagues had come together to mark the launch of "Peter Alliss: Reflections On A Life Well Lived," the last book bearing his name.
The capital letters were hardly necessary. We all know Peter enjoyed a well-lived life. His was a much-loved life too. He was there, red cardigan and large smile and all, in the form of a big photograph that was positioned just behind Jackie, his wife, as she spoke about him and the book and Bill Elliott, the journalist, who collaborated with Alliss to get his words down on paper.
Alliss was more than a golf commentator. He was a warm-hearted man, generous in spirit and in kind, a good man with whom to be stuck waiting for a train. He brought golf to life for many (and annoyed a few) and for years had been one of the BBC’s esteemed and elderly commentators whose names became synonymous with their sport – Bill McLaren on rugby, David Coleman on athletics, Dan Maskell on tennis and Richie Benaud on cricket for example, all of whom are now dead.
I remember, perhaps two decades ago, attending a signing ceremony on the publication of an earlier Alliss book. The feeling in that bookshop as several hundred worshippers passed through to receive his blessing and a signature was one of reverence and humour. “This is not gin, by the way,” he said of the glass of water he held in his right hand. “I wouldn’t blame you if it was,” an elderly woman blurted out. There always was humour when Alliss was around. It was his force field.
Will there ever be another like his commentating on golf? In a soon-to-be-published essay in Golf Monthly on the subject of working with Alliss, Elliott writes: “A few years ago I asked him who he thought would replace him as The Voice Of Golf? He considered the question for a while, smiled and then said ‘I don't think they've found them yet.’ ” He was right then. Since his death, numerous people have been used as commentators on golf, but none has begun to make the job his own.
A question hung in the air last Thursday: How many copies would the book sell? “About 22,” Elliott said jokingly.
“There is great affection for him, and that will help sales,” said David Luxton, a leading literary agent who specialises in sports books. “I can well see someone walking into the Waterstones in Cardiff, seeing it on a table and thinking, That will do well for the golf lover in my life. It is a perfect Christmas present.”
Nonetheless, golf books in the United Kingdom tend not to sell large numbers of copies even when published in the weeks before Christmas in the hope they will be stuffed into stockings and even when bearing a name as famous in golf as Peter Alliss.
Which golf book sold the most copies in the past eight years? Was it the deeply-researched "Tiger Woods" by Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian, two American authors, which was shortlisted for the highly regarded William Hill Sports Book of the Year award in 2018? Was it Alan Shipnuck’s much-praised "Phil: The Rip-Roaring (and Unauthorized!) Biography of Golf’s Most Colorful Superstar" published this year? Or was it "No Limits: My Autobiography" by Ian Poulter, which came out in 2014?
"Golf might show up well in the aftermath of a good Ryder Cup (e.g. Poulter’s book), or if someone wins a major championship and has an interesting and unusual backstory ..."
David Luxton
The answer is Poulter’s, which sold 32,274 copies, four times as many as the Woods book and more than 20 times as many as the Mickelson book. Perhaps it is because Poulter is a character and was at the height of his powers as an unbeatable singles player in the Ryder Cup and had played an important part in Europe’s remarkable win over the U.S. at Medinah, near Chicago, two years earlier.
“Cycling books have exploded lately,” Luxton said. “There is a lot of good writing in and about cycling. Golf might show up well in the aftermath of a good Ryder Cup (e.g. Poulter’s book), or if someone wins a major championship and has an interesting and unusual backstory then that could make things happen. A lot depends on its promotion. If booksellers get behind it and display it well, then it should do well.”
At this point I should reveal my hand. I love books the way some people love paintings. I have thousands of them, and to me they underline the words of Anthony Powell, the novelist, who wrote one called Books Do Furnish a Room. When I move house, I take as much care transporting my hardback books as I do pieces of bone china or cut glass.
By books, I mean hardback not paperback books. Paperback books somehow don’t cut it with me with their stained covers, their misshapen spines, their loose pages. On the other hand, I love the moments when you first pick up a new hardback and feel its heft and notice the thickness of the paper. Some paper resembles parchment more than paper. The crinkle when you open a hardback for the first few times is as satisfying as was unwrapping a Dunlop 65 from its paper years ago. The smell of a new book to me is as intoxicating as the smell of coffee beans.
Of my books, the biggest oeuvre is that of golf books. My collection is nothing like the size of Alastair Johnston’s. His is the biggest and most comprehensive in the world. On the other hand, my golf library, if that is not too fanciful a word for my collection, is bigger than yours. I have nearly 20 about Woods, for example, and they take up half the space on one shelf. On account of Bernard Darwin being a predecessor of mine as golf correspondent of The Times, I have made it my business to try and collect every one of his books, if possible a first edition. I believe he wrote 28 books, most but not all about golf, and I have 25 of them.
As I left the launch party and said goodbye to Jackie, Sarah, her daughter, and to others the question of book sales came up once more. How many?
“23,” Elliott said, smiling.
“We have printed 5,000 copies, and reprints are, so to speak, on standby,” Adrian Stephenson of Lennard Publishing said of the book which retails at £25 (about $28.35). “If we sold 10,000 copies, we would have done well, and very well if we sold 20,000. People are going to Amazon to buy it. The word will get around. There is a flickering flame there. Our job is to fan it.”
Top: The late Peter Alliss
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