Write in the thick of things

Ghostwritten memoirs are the pariahs of sports literature and and are often judged by critics who have to stifle the urge to squeeze the words "pap" or "vapid" into their reviews. Rob Bagchi in his blog on the Guardian website believes Marcus Trescothick's Coming Back to Life winning the William Hill Sports Book of the Year is a triumph for the particular genre.

There have been so many produced with the titles 'My Autobiography' or 'My Story' over the past 10 years that I have started to suspect that it's gone beyond a claim for definitiveness and has become the crudest Amazon search engine optimisation strategy. Pretty soon all autobiographies will just be called 'The Book'.