Customer Reviews
Well worth reading - By: Mr. Martyn C. Knox, 23 Sep 2008 
Being a bit of a sport nut & having experienced both Athens & recently Beijing as an excited visitor it was enlightening to read about the trials & tribulations of the olympicsin 1948. The book accurately recreates the era & whilst clearly a world away from the modern corporate games & it's 24 hour coverage the lessons highlighted by the author are very much relevant for 2012.
The real stories of the individuals are described wonderfully with a real attention to detail that is easy to picture.
The tone of the book is anecdotal & an easy read even when covering the politics of the olympic organisers.
If there is one criticism, some of the sports are given scant coverage & the book concentrates on the human stories of boy scouts & helpers rather than than the athletes themselves & their remarkable achievements.
It is accepted that the book is perhaps a more entertaining read because of this but for those who like statistics & records above all else this is not the book for you.
'The austerity Olympics' will certainly appeal to sports fans & non sports fans alike & credit must be given to the author for evoking the real spirit of the games & the people involvedin putting them on.
For those whose sporting memories don't go back any further than the 80's the book is a must.
A wonderful revelation of the period. - By: brilliantnyenye, 25 May 2008 
What a great book. More a social commentary than a sports book, but a real lesson on what can be achieved given the political will - combined with genuine public support. Should be required reading for every member of the IOC & the British Government. Simply serves to highlight the obsenity of the 2012 proposals.
Glorious Games - By: Julie Summers, 16 May 2008 I read this book from cover to cover including the appendices & I just loved it. Janie Hampton has managed to capture the essence & quintessence of all the different sports. When she was writing about athletics I found myself convinced that she was an athletics correspondent, on the rowing - well she was up there with Dan Topolski & on the riding, wrestling & sailing I just knew I was reading things written by an expert. I fellin love with Fanny Blankers Koehn, I envied the US diving girls their glorious silky bathing suits, I was entranced by the art of fencing & I wished I'd beenin Torbay. The facts, figures & details are so cleverly wovenin to the tale that it works really well.
This is a lovely book. It is not often that I can say that unreservedly but it is certainly the case with Janie Hampton's story of the 1948 Olympics. And a story it is, for the extraordinary thing we learn about those Olympic Games is that they really were as homespun as the title of the book suggests. After the Second World War there was on the one hand a tremendous wearinessin Britain but on the other there was still a good dose of the make-do & mend culture which contained an innate degree of optimism which pervaded the lead up to the Olympics & went on throughout the Games themselves. The great delight of this book is that it makes you feel as if Janie Hampton was there herself.
First hand accounts from spectators as well as athletes give a worm's eye view of events while Janie Hampton's excellent research & understanding of the time provides the balancing bird's eye view of the historian. So many of the athletes were true amateursin the way that most readers would be able to identify with & yet they come across as passionate about their sport, professionalin their desire to win but refreshingly honest about how much training they had been able to do. Dorothy Manley, one of three British women runners, confessed that her preparation was very low key as she had a full time jobin the city as a typist: `I could only train after work for a couple of hours, four evenings a week.' & yet she was competing for Britain against one of the greatest women athletes of all time, the Dutchwoman Fanny Blankers-Koen. You really feel you get to know these women reading this book, as you do the men. And it's not just the Czech runner, Kartopek, with his agonisingly pained style of running but Halliday, the weightlifter who, three years before the Games, had been released from a Japanese POW camp weighing under five stone. These athletes come alivein The Austerity Olympics, as do the boy scouts, the spectators, the organisers & even the journalists managed to make me smile.
I strongly recommend this book to anyone who is interestedin sport, to anyone who has an interestin the period & to everyone else who needs a really good book to take on holiday or to give as a Christmas present.
When Olympians were not so spoiled - By: Mrs. A. Walker, 13 May 2008 I would highly recommend this book. It is really well written, a fascinating topic & will have you laughing all the way round the athletics track. The author has clearly researched her subject well & found some stories which will amuse & entertain even those, like me, who loathe sportin action. In the light of the preparations for the impending Chinese Olympics & all the brouhaha surrounding them, it is a delight to be reminded of how we dull stodgy Brits knew how to put on a good show despite all kinds of deprivation.
