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Kemp and Potter
Nicholas Shakespeare
‘By coming to Tasmania, I'd repeated the pattern of an ancient, unknown relative and the discovery pleased me in a profound and mysterious way.’
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‘Feelings can be very obscure but numbers never lie.’
Kevin Brazil on metrics, obsession and fitness.
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‘An intense workout is an ecstasy of punishment packaged as self-improvement.’
Mary Wellesley on exercise, ritual and Barry’s Bootcamp.
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‘I was not good at sports because I would not do sports because I did not have the body for sports because I would not do sports.’
Saba Sams on girlhood, embodiment and avoiding sports.
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‘Following United rarely brings me any great joy and most often it depresses me. If I could disengage, I would.’
Jonny Thakkar on Manchester United.
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‘I deployed my body against an opponent like a blunt and effective instrument.’
John Patrick McHugh on playing Gaelic football.
Nicholas Shakespeare
Nicholas Shakespeare was one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists in 1993. He has written for Granta on Abimael Guzman, Martha Gellhorn and Tasmania, the background to his most recent novel, Secrets of the Sea. He is also the author of a biography Bruce Chatwin, and is currently preparing an edition of Chatwin's letters.
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