Description
How Tennis Invented Everything features over 100 stories showing how the humble game of tennis has influenced our lives in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways. It reveals how tennis has shaped history, from the death of kings to the birth of democracy; from inventing banking to causing the world financial crisis.
When he is talking at literary festivals, by far the most requested story he is asked to tell is the one about how tennis invented the Secret Service and even James Bond himself. That’s great fun and always goes down well.
Perhaps the biggest selling point is the book puts forward a brand new theory that solves a mystery that has baffled historians and scholars for over six centuries, and that is why on earth is tennis scored at 15 points at a time. The book resolves this puzzle at last, resulting in the book being inducted into the Wimbledon Library & Museum complex as well as the Tennis Hall of Fame in America.
In was also featured in a double page spread in The Daily Mail who described the book as “a must-have accessory for tennis lovers everywhere”. The author himself is more modest, describing it simply as “a love letter to tennis.”
As for the author, I will give you an abbreviated version of the introduction they used at The Chalk Valley History Festival for him…
Before writing this book, Christian had also written for many TV shows like: BBC’s Jasper Carrott for the Carrott Confidential show, which was twice nominated for a Palm d’Or in Cannes; He also wrote for Rory Bremner’s show And Now Something Else; and Clive Anderson Talks Back on Channel 4.
For radio he has written for many shows like Weekending, The News Huddlines, and Two Cheers for BBC Radio 4. He was a regular satirists on the Sideswipes column on Punch Magazine, and was a named columnist on Excel Magazine, Edge Magazine, FORE! Magazine, and Today’s Golfer.
He has worked in the tennis world for over 20 years including as the Editor of The Queen’s Club Magazine where he sourced many of the stories.
Intriguingly, the book has been spotted everywhere from Buckingham Palace to 10 Downing Street, and the book is also in discussions to be turned into a TV series with Netflix. The chapter on “How Tennis Invented The Secret Service” has already being filmed as a tester for the show.
