*A FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021*Tim Moore the author of the Sunday Times bestselling
French Revolutions completes his epic (and ill-advised) trilogy of cycling's Grand Tours.
Julian Berrendero's victory in the 1941 Vuelta a Espana was an extraordinary exercise in
sporting redemption: the Spanish cyclist had just spent 18 months in Franco's concentration
camps punishment for expressing Republican sympathies during the civil war. Seventy nine years
later perennially over-ambitious cyclo-adventurer Tim Moore developed a fascination with
Berrendero's story and having borrowed an old road bike with the great man's name plastered
all over it set off to retrace the 4 409km route of his 1941 triumph - in the midst of a
global pandemic. What follows is a tale of brutal heat and lonely roads of glory humiliation
and then a bit more humiliation. Along the way Tim recounts the civil war's still-vivid
tragedies and finds the gregarious but impressively responsible locals torn between welcoming
their nation's only foreign visitor and bundling him and his filthy bike into a vat of
antiviral gel.'Bill Bryson on two wheels' Independent
