The Last Bell

Life, Death and Boxing

De: Donald McRae

Narrado por: Ronald McIntosh

Shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2025

'One of boxing’s most honest and nuanced comment­ators' Times Literary Supplement

'A poignant farewell from a boxing obsessive to a sport he now barely recognises . . . characterised throughout by moral clarity” Literary Review

‘The Last Bell is one of the most engaging sports books I’ve read for a long time’ Mike Williams, ‘Today’, BBC Radio 4

Donald McRae has been immersed in boxing for fifty years. He has followed fighters around the world and won multiple awards for his writing. But, in recent years, McRae’s love has waned, as criminality and corruption consume the soul of boxing.

In 2018, grieving the death of his sister and with his parents terminally ill, he sought refuge in boxing again – just as Tyson Fury completed an incredible comeback, proving that the ring can still offer exhilaration and redemption.

From Fury’s resurrection to the first undisputed heavyweight champion this century, boxing can be epic and electrifying. It can also be disappointing, as McRae discovers when he documents doping’s insidious rise or travels to Saudi Arabia where boxing ignores state repression. In The Last Bell, McRae takes us ringside to thrilling bouts with great contemporary champions and fighters as different as Fury, Canelo Álvarez, Oleksandr Usyk, Katie Taylor, Regis Prograis and Isaac Chamberlain. Whether in London or Las Vegas, he shows us what it is like to see joy pour out of a boxer in the dressing room after a magnificent victory or to hold the hand of a fighter being wheeled away on a stretcher after a devastating defeat. As he tries to reconcile the contradictions which lie at boxing’s murky heart, McRae is unflinching and compelling.

McRae helps boxers open up about their doubts and fears and charts the courage of fighters facing ordeals from depression to war. And in telling the heartbreaking story of Patrick Day, he faces death in the ring. The Last Bell is his most powerful and personal book yet, a riveting account of life, death and boxing.

Reseñas de la Crítica

‘As with the sport itself, boxing writing is about so much more than physical combat – it’s about the dark drama of life and death in their totality. That Donald McRae understands this implicitly makes him one of the very best writers working today. I’ll read anything he turns his hand to.’ (Benjamin Myers, author of The Offing and The Gallows Pole)

'Every new book about boxing by Donald McRae is cause for celebration. Nobody does it better.' (Thomas Hauser, author of Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times)

‘Nobody writes about boxing like Don McRae. But with The Last Bell he has written a book that moves beyond just boxing and grapples instead with what it truly means to fight. It is a book about knowing when to bite down and keep swinging, about knowing when to throw in the towel, a book about loss and defeat, and how we might, in the final reckoning, face those inevitabilities with a kind of a redeeming grace.’ (Keiran Goddard, author of I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning)

‘About life, death and boxing, McRae beautifully melds those constituent parts, then transcends them, to recount a profound journey through the human experience in a way that only a writer of his immense talent and humanity could. Exceptional and unique. I can’t recommend it enough.’ (David Whitehouse, author of About A Son)

‘Don McRae has spent fifty years in thrall to the fight game. The Last Bell is at once a moving memoir and McRae's swansong as a boxing writer--a fine, vivid, and searching tribute to a sport than can be as lethal as it is uplifting.’ (Ed Caesar, author of The Moth and the Mountain)

‘The Last Bell is heart-pounding and enraging, and yet somehow tender, too, full of the grace and wisdom that comes from decades of observing and reflecting on boxing (and sport, competition, spectacle, in general). Reading about Patrick Day’s devastating final bout, I was pacing my office. Thrilling and raw, this is sport writing at its best, but also much more than that. McRae crafts an urgent and unforgettable meditation on risk, loss, and our enduring hunger to find meaning in struggle: a subject that captivates and brings together readers and writers of all kinds.’ (Dina Nayeri, author of The Ungrateful Refugee)

‘A beautiful, gripping, always surprising book about sport, life, boxing, men, women, art, ageing, family and why we get lost in things. Don McRae is a champion of sports writing. This book is a relentlessly absorbing mix of detail, humour, sadness, wisdom and colour from a life lived in that world.’ (Barney Ronay, chief sports writer at the Guardian)