Another history of the Tour de France? Yes, and a very readable one at that. Whether A Race for Madmen actually does what it says on the cover and relates “the extraordinary history of the Tour de France” is debatable if only in that the history of cycle racing in general has so many bizarre and improbable episodes that none of those from the Tour is truly extraordinary. 

What the book does very well is to assemble all the old favourite Tour tales – and plenty of less well-known ones – of courage, fortitude, ill-fortune, cheating and sheer mule-headed imbecility in a highly-readable style that neatly weaves numerous relevant threads through the weft of each discrete chapter.

Profiles of the “greats” sit nicely with asides on the less successful racers who attempted and occasionally managed to beat them and there is enough background information on the unwritten rules and traditions of the race to give the cycling novice a good grounding prior to the 2010 edition.

A Race for Madmen finishes, naturally enough, with a look at how the 2010 Tour might pan out following the events of 2009. Read it fron the front cover and the madness of the whole event does make some kind of sense. 

A Race for Madmen is published by HarperCollins and is priced at £20.

ISBN 978-0-00-732141-4