Sport, the universe and everything

The Meaning of Sport Simon Barnes (Short Books, 363pp) £16.99

IS IT just me or are Short Books getting longer? Simon Barnes's two brief books on birdwatching are now followed by a lengthy and discursive meditation on the meaning and purpose of sport and, almost incidentally, the meaning and purpose of sportswriting. Barnes is well qualified for the task: he is chief sportswriter at The Times and for many years has been showering readers with thoughtful and often strikingly original columns and match reports.

The world probably divides into those who enjoy his questing, sensitive, highbrow approach and those who cannot believe he has held a job down for so long. Certainly no one has appeared more regularly in Private Eye's Pseuds' Corner column over the past few years. But, if he sometimes overreaches himself with the metaphors, at least he is out there, reaching for something. It is surely better to fail from time to time and risk looking stupid than not to bother at all.

This book, then, comes as a sort of culmination of everything Barnes has been trying to do in his journalism: to seek out underlying meaning and work out what sport is for, if indeed it is for anything. He begins in Lisbon at the 2004 European Football Championship - not the most promising point of departure - and we follow him from event to event, from one side of the world to the other, as he watches and thinks and tries to make sense of it all.

Initially it all seems very shambling and random. Each of his 150-odd chapters is but a few pages long - one or two are only a paragraph - and themes come and go in what seems an entirely arbitrary fashion. But, as the book progresses, an intriguing pattern emerges. The themes are returning, being built upon, nestling into each other, all shaped by the sports he has seen and reported on. The boldness and ambition of the book become apparent only very gradually, by which time you are completely drawn into his strange quest. It is like feeding on something highly nutritious that happens to taste good too.

If I have any complaint - and it is the only reason this book has not been given five stars - it is that there is not enough cricket in it. In the natural order of pieces Barnes does not visit a cricket match until halfway through the book and, although his insights into the 2005 Ashes series are typically acute, I wanted more of them. But much of what he writes is at least indirectly applicable to the greatest of games.

His book will not please everyone - he has a tendency to tick you off if you have not read Finnegans Wake all the way to the end and he really does not get golf - but I have a feeling I will be coming back to it again and again, whenever I am in need of a particular variety of mental nourishment. And, if you too sometimes feel you know less about sport the more you see of it, this may help you out.

To buy this book click here