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  • Published: 22 November 2018
  • ISBN: 9781448129904
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 256

How to Beat the Australians



Richard Beard's brilliant follow-up to Muddied Oafs - a comic quest to beat the Australians at their own games...

'Feeling the way I do now, it's not a feeling I ever want to have again.' Andrew Flintoff speaks for a nation.

The Ashes, 2006/07: Australia 5 England 0. The nightmare returns.

For twenty years, Australia has produced competitors so gritty they order sandwiches with sand in, and not just at cricket. Fourth in the medals table at the Athens Olympics, Tour de France contenders, Davis Cup champions, and the Socceroos 3--1 winners over England. For Richard Beard, the football was the last straw.

So, on the well-established principle that if you want something doing ..., he travelled down to Australia for seven rounds of hand-to-hand sporting combat, to find out just what makes the Australians so good, and how to beat them.

  • Published: 22 November 2018
  • ISBN: 9781448129904
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 256

About the author

Richard Beard

Richard Beard is the author of Acts of the Assassins which was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize and most recently, The Day That Went Missing. In the twenty years since his first book he has published critically acclaimed novels and narrative non-fiction, including Becoming Drusilla, the story of how a friendship between two men was changed by a gender transition. He was formerly director of the National Academy of Writing in London, and is now a visiting professor at the University of Tokyo and has a Creative Writing Fellowship at the University of East Anglia. He is an optimistic opening batsman for the Authors Cricket Club.

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Praise for How to Beat the Australians

Hilarious

Time Out

An extremely funny part-travelogue, part-self-discovery and part-investigation into how the 53rd most populous country became world beaters.

GQ

Beard is a good, thoughtful writer.

Independent on Sunday

Highly recommended.

Big Issue

Beard clearly saved England in 2005. Where the bloody hell is he now?

Daily Telegraph

There's something peculiarly English about going to Australia to take on the locals at every sport imaginable just for the sake of undermining their arrogance, athletic prowess and over-achievement. But Beard does this with dry humour and aplomb.

Irish Times