From Last to First: How I Became a Marathon Champion

Charlie Spedding describes himself as ‘not particularly talented’ – at least, compared to the group of people he had chosen to find himself among. These were the athletes in the Olympic marathon. So how did he end up with a bronze medal? How did he win the London Marathon? And why does he still hold the English record for the distance?

In this remarkable autobiography he explains how – how someone who was almost bottom of the class when he first went to school, and even worse at sport, even...