‘Everything to Play For’ the QI book of sports

What does David Attenborough have to do with yellow tennis balls? … Why did Victorian doctors fear the outbreak of ‘bicycle face’? … What led ancient Egyptian athletes to have their spleens removed?

You’ll find the answers to these questions, and more, in Everything to Play For: The QI Book of Sports by James Harkin and Anna Ptaszynski – senior researchers, writers and script editors for the BBC’s QI, Delving into the world of sports and employing the QI Elves’ legendary curiosity, the book tells some of the most improbable, fascinating and endlessly entertaining sporting stories – from prehistory to the present day.

Discover the psychology of football chants, comically large cricket bats, pole-vaulting priests and professional pillow fighting. You’ll be rooting for a Taiwanese tug-of-war team and outraged by croquet skullduggery, you’ll admire the audacity of sporting history’s greatest cheats and discover the pure delight that is Puppy Bowl. All human life is here: the rise of civilisations, psychology, war, money, substance abuse, success, loss, redemption and more.

James Harkin and Anna Ptaszynski:

‘At the end of the day, it’s a book of two halves and we’re over the moon to have had the chance to write both of them. We always gave 110 per cent, and we couldn’t have done it without the team at Faber, who really brought their A-game. But clichés aside, we’ve been excited for a long time to give the QI treatment to the world of sport. Sure enough, our research uncovered some incredible characters and unbelievable stories.

‘We hope sports fans and non-sports fans alike will love learning about them as much as we did, because you don’t need any prior sports knowledge to enjoy what is really a book about human behaviour in all its weirdness. As another old sporting cliché goes, “you just couldn’t write it”. . . except we did.’

Everything to Play For: The QI Book of Sports, released on the 19th of October 2023. £14.99 hardback, ISBN 9780571372539