The Gentleman Magazine Issue 6 | December 2017 | Page 51

Number and value of the UK donations since the inception of
the report:
A RINGSIDE AFFAIR BOXING’S LAST
GOLDEN AGE By JAMES LAWTON
Bloomsbury Sport £20 Hardback /£9.99 eBook
‘I loved reading this book. It brought back everything to me,
Tyson, Holyfield and all that I experienced in an age of boxing
I was proud to be part of... I lived it again.’ Lennox Lewis
For three decades at the end of the twentieth century –
throughout boxing’s most engrossing era – James Lawton was
ringside, covering every significant bout, spending time with
the likes of Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Leonard, Marvelous
Marvin Hagler, Tommy Hitman Hearns, Roberto Duran, Mike
Tyson, Lennox Lewis, Evander Holyfield and many other great
fighters.
Lawton witnessed Ali screaming in pain for his dressing-room
lights to be turned out after a fight; he was there to meet Tyson
at the prison gates on his release in 1992; he listened as former
champions wept while struggling to find their new place in
the world. As part of a small, tight-knit group of sportswriters
with the privilege of covering each fight in such intimate detail,
Lawton formed lifelong friendships and found himself forever
altered by being caught up in the whirlwind of a sport at its
most spellbinding.
A Ringside Affair brings that brilliant epoch back to life – and
puts it in the perspective it deserves. It salutes the epic quality
of boxing’s last years of glory, retraces arguably the richest
inheritance bequeathed to any sport, and speculates on the
possibility that we will never see such fighting again. It is part
celebration, part lament, but perhaps most of all it is a personal
record of some of most enthralling and challenging days
produced by the world’s oldest sport.
The Gentleman Magazine | 51