A stalwart of the club scene who encouraged a generation of female cyclists, when eventually deposed by her daughter, the older Burton refused to embrace her and sunk into a depression over the loss of her previous identity. She was clearly a complicated character too and the book does a good job of praising such an incredible sports person without avoiding her flaws too. Last time I wrote a review about a biography of Beryl Burton (which is not something you get to say very often), I questioned why it had taken so long for one to appear; now I am wondering why we have another one already! She just couldn’t stop being competitive, to the ruin of her health, and most likely contributing to her relatively early death just before her 59th birthday (she died cycling to deliver invitations to her birthday party). As an example, at 15 pages Wilson devotes three times as much space to Burton's only 24-hour time trial as Fotheringham, who in turn wrote twice as much about it as Burton did in her autobiography, Personal Best.

A wonderful biography of one of Britain's least known but most highly decorated sports stars, Yorkshire cyclist Beryl Burton. TT national titles: 18 x 100miles, 23 x 50miles, 26 x 25miles and won the TT BBAR in 25 consecutive years from 1959-1983. In the process, she overtook Mike McNamara who was on his way to setting the somewhat shorter men’s record of 276. Her daughter was one of the people interviewed for the book and while she isn’t resentful (or not much) you can certainly tell she did not have a good relationship with her mother. Only three years after a previous profile here's another one, although Jeremy Wilson extends the remit of a conventional biography to explore other aspects of Burton's incomparable cycling career.Beryl was a woman ahead of her time, she was an incredible athlete with an inspirational mindset, and we are only left to imagine what she would have achieved given the same opportunities as the women's peloton now has.

Discover your next non-fiction read and brilliant book gifts in the Profile newsletter, and find books to help you live well with Souvenir Press.Wilson takes the more traditional route, using a major publisher, with the associated improvements in marketing and distribution. Whether through reticence or the belief that there’d be little interest in the personal life of a working-class Yorkshirewoman, Burton’s autobiography Personal Best went sparingly on the first part of its title. Long before the advent of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Beryl Potter did some of the most important pioneering disability rights activism. A survivor of more than one hundred surgeries, a dangerous opioid addiction, and multiple suicide attempts, Beryl Potter devoted herself to bettering the lives of other people with disabilities and made a tremendous contribution to disability awareness from the 1970s to 1990s.

Free from dependency on other riders, its purity instantly appealed to Burton’s ascetic personality. For the first time, he also provides the jaw-dropping answer to how fast she would still be on modern cycling technology. Waterstones Best Books of 2022 * I simply cannot exaggerate how bloody great this book is and how inspiring Beryl's story is -- Emma Cole * Cyclist * My 97-year-old mother-in-law has no interest in cycling but picked it up from our kitchen table, took it home, and loved it!Given her myriad achievements across several decades, it is surprising that Burton is relatively unknown among the wider public; this book aims to address that.