The glory and grime of boxing

Donald McRae's new book, The Last Bell : Life, Death and Boxing, has an almost valedictory quality, having been written after a decade marked by a series of family bereavements.

He has spent the best part of four decades documenting professional boxing’s excesses with unflagging commitment.

His back catalogue contains several acknowledged classics, Dark Trade: Lost in Boxing , is his best-known work.

The book is dedicated to the late Patrick Day, a promising Haitian -American super-welterweight who died in October 2019 after sustaining a traumatic head injury during a title fight with fellow American , Charles Cornwell .

Day a straight-A student who hailed from a solidly middle-class family in New York was a figure of unusual gentleness.

Day’s tragic death is by no means unique, but the book is populated with the dead.

The Last Bell : Life, Death and Boxing by Donald McRae is published by Simon & Schuster .

The book is a biography of George Best and Duncan Edwards , two different Manchester United prodigies.

The author takes us inside the ring, be it Madison Square Garden or the resolute anti-glamour of a Crystal Palace leisure centre alike.