Alone

The previously-untold story of the life and tragic early death of John Curry, one of the most famous ice skaters in history.
The book that inspired new film The Ice King, the story of John Curry's life.
One winter's night in 1976, over 20 million people in Britain watched John Curry skate to Olympic gold on an ice rink in Austria. Many millions more watched around the world. Overnight he became one of the most famous men on the planet. He was awarded an OBE. He was chosen as BBC Sports Personality of the Year.
Curry changed ice skating from marginal sport to high art. And yet the man was a mystery to a world that had been dazzled by his gift. Surely, men's skating was supposed to be Cossack-muscular, not sensual and ambiguous like this?
Curry himself was a complex, tortured man. For the first time, Alone untangles the extraordinary web of his toxic, troubled, brilliant and short life. It is a story of childhood nightmares, furious ambition, sporting genius, lifelong rivalries, homophobia, Cold War politics, financial ruin and deep personal tragedy.
So much more than a sports biography, Alone reveals the restless, impatient, often dark soul of a man whose words could lacerate, whose skating invariably moved audiences to tears, and who after succumbing to AIDS, as so many of his fellow artists and friends did, died of a heart attack aged just 44.

Bill Jones started his working life as a journalist with various Northern provincial newspapers. In the early 80s he joined Granada Television in Manchester where he worked on literally hundreds of documentaries for the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and many others - including an award-winning film about the contents of Frank Sinatra's coffin - before embarking on a writing career after almost three decades in broadcasting. His first book - The Ghost Runner - won him The Times Best New Writer in the 2012 British Sports Book Awards. It was also shortlisted for the William Hill award. Born in Bridlington, the author currently lives in Ampleforth, North Yorkshire, where - despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary - he insists that his ancestry is Welsh.

Introduction
Prologue
1 'I am a dancer'
2 'Forbidden fruit'
3 'For the Morons'
4 'The Hermit of Denver'
5 'That Olympic business'
6 'The fairy for the tree'
7 'Dangerous appetites'
8 'Daddy says no'
9 With an angel'
10 'Moving on air'
11 'Silently the senses'
12 'The kiss of the sun'
Acknowledgements
Index