You can keep the internet. You can keep the computer & the mobile phone. In the bicycle humanity has its most perfect invention of the last three hundred years & in Bella Bathurst the bike has found the best & brightest booster so far." BORIS JOHNSON At last
- a bicycle book for the rest of us...A book for the sort of cyclist who likes cycling & reading & stories. Guardian Two wheels. A frame. Two pedals. What could be simpler than a bicycle? & yet the bike continues to inspire a passionate following. Since the millennium its use in Britain has doubled & then doubled again. Thousands now cycle to work with more & more taking it up every day. Acclaimed author Bella Bathurst takes us on a journey through cyclings best stories & strangest incarnations from the bicycle as a weapon of warfare to the secret life of couriers & the alchemy of framebuilding. With a cast of characters including the woman who watercycled across the Channel the man who raced Indias Deccan Queen train & several of todays top cyclists she offers us a brilliantly engaging portrait of cyclings past present & world-conquering future."