Front cover

“The Olympics A Very Peculiar History” is an entertaining pocket-sized book by David Arscott.

Previously a newspaper journalist as well a BBC presenter David Arscott worked as a freelance author, broadcaster, publisher and editor is been a prolific author.

The book takes a novel approach to telling the Olympic story, jumping between a narrative, lists of facts, short stories and timelines.

This is probably not a book to pick up and read cover-to-cover like a novel, more something that you can dip in and out of.

A few examples:

• The origins of the ancient and modern Olympics;
• Timeline of the Olympics from 776 BC to the present day;
• The eccentric mascots from the last 40 years of games;
• London’s hat-trick of games;
• The great losers;
• An A to Z of great Olympians;
• And many more.

In summary, this book presents a lot of information in its 192 pages in a quirky, but engaging way. It has been well researched and provides a good historical backdrop to the modern Olympic Games.