Duncan Hamilton Meet the Author


Duncan Hamilton

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The athlete Eric Liddell is the man whose story was immortalised

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in the Oscar-winning film Chariots of Fire.

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A strict Christian, he refused to run in the 100m

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at the Paris Olympics in 1924 because the race

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was being held on a Sunday.

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He went on, however, to produce an astonishing performance

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in the 400m, to win gold and become a national hero.

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But a new book shows that was only part of his extraordinary life.

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For The Glory is the work of Duncan Hamilton,

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who is a former journalist and an award-winning sports writer.

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Duncan Hamilton, this is a story that we think

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we know from Chariots of Fire.

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What was it that made you want to dig deeper?

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I think it was basically I wanted to know what happened next.

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If you remember, Chariots of Fire ends, simply saying that he had died

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in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp.

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And, of course, Chariots of Fire goes up only to 1924

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and Eric Liddell died in 1945, so there was an awful lot

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of space to go and look at.

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We will look at it in a minute, but first of all, let us go back

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to 1924 and those Olympics in Paris.

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Here is a man who decides he is not going to run the 100m on a Sunday,

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but then goes on to win gold in the 400m.

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I think it is worth reminding us what an extraordinary

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achievement that was.

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It was, because he couldn't really train for the 400 metres

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until the spring of that year.

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He only had about half a dozen races before he went to Paris

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and he was given absolutely no chance of winning.

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The British Olympic Association were very confident

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that he would change his mind and that he would run on a Sunday.

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What I found out was that, even six weeks before the race,

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they were still saying that he would race, in the 100 metres.

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He was there, in their official team.

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He wasn't in the 400 metres.

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I mean, one of the things that people don't realise

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is that he had his own trainer, which isn't mentioned

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in Chariots of Fire.

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And he did a tremendous amount of work with him.

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He got him ready.

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And the performance that he kind of put on was fabulous.

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He won well?

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Yes, it was a world-record time.

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And I think, also, what people tend to forget is that, had he raced

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again, in 1928 in Amsterdam, he would surely have

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won gold there, too.

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He had this very unorthodox running style.

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His great rival Harold Abrahams called him the human spider?

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He ran with his head up, so he wasn't looking at the track,

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he was looking at the sky, really.

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Great Britain appointed a team manager who was also

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a part-time journalist.

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And if you read some of his articles in the weeks before the Olympics,

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literally, only a fortnight beforehand, he is effectively

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saying that he has got the wrong running style,

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and that he just won't win a single solitary button.

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So, afterwards, Eric Liddell could really have been nasty

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about it but of course, he just wasn't that kind of person.

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He just won his gold medal. Afterwards, he went to a tea dance,

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on the Champs-Elysees, and that was it.

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So here's this man, he has got the world at his feet

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and he turned his back on athletics.

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He decides to dedicate his life to the church.

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He becomes a missionary and he goes to China.

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What was it about this period of his life that

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particularly fascinated you?

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I think it was the fact that China was a very primitive country then.

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When you think about it, in terms of the number

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of missionaries murdered, on the very day he left,

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The Times was reporting about another missionary murder.

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They could have virtually kept that set in their type,

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because virtually every fortnight, for the next 15 or 16 years,

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there were missionaries murdered regularly.

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It was a very dangerous place. There was the Nationalists,

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the Communists, the guerillas, the warlords.

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It was a bit like Game of Thrones, really.

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China was in a complete state of flux.

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And I think to go and be a missionary there, you really

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needed to be a very, very brave person.

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It is worth remembering the sacrifices that he made,

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a family, ultimately.

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He sent his wife Florence who was pregnant at the time

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and their two children away from China back to Canada

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where she was from and you dedicate the book to Florence,

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why is that?

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She was just a remarkable woman.

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I think it must have been love at first sight or at least,

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there must have been a fabulous bond there, really.

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And for her to put up with the kind of missionary life.

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He sent them off, thinking that he would probably join them

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in about a year's time.

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But then, of course, Pearl Harbor happened.

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Japan entered the war.

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They were already in China, fighting.

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And he just found it impossible to get out.

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And of course, he ended up in a prisoner of war camp?

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He did.

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That was around early 1943.

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I went to the camp in China.

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There are still buildings left of it.

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I think what amazed me the most is the size of it.

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It was so small.

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There was a total of 2,100 people there throughout the three years

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of its life and it was at its worst when he first went in.

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There were 1,800 people living in a space that wasn't much bigger

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than two football pitches.

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And the conditions were appalling.

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One thought kept reoccurring to me as I read this book,

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this man Eric Liddell, he was almost too good to be true.

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What did you make of him?

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I was waiting for somebody to tell me something about him

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that was a little fault.

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But somebody once said of him that he was the closest thing

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to a saint that they had ever met.

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Somebody told me a tale, in the camp everybody was allocated

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a particular job.

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You were supposed to do your job, and keep yourself ready

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for that job.

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Whereas, she said she would see him walking around the camp

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and he was doing other things too.

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And he was never, never kind of rested.

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He never rested.

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He just worked himself to the absolute bone.

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And it was in the camp that he died, tragically just months

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before it was liberated?

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Yes, about six months before liberation, he had a brain tumour

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and, sadly, the X-ray equipment that would have told him what he had,

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only came into the camp, two weeks after he died.

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But remarkably, he was running races in the camp.

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Keeping morale up.

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Finally, Eric Liddell, what would he make of athletics today?

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I don't think he would compete in the Olympics nowadays.

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I think he would be appalled by the drug-taking,

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by the commercialism of it.

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And I don't think that he would compete.

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He would probably have found another sport,

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I certainly don't think he would have been going

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to Rio, for example.

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Duncan Hamilton, thank you very much for coming in and talking to us

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about For The Glory, The Life Of Eric Liddell.

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It has been a pleasure.

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Thanks.

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