The Bluffer’s Guide To Cycling, Rob Ainsley (2013)

A diminutive novelty that’s on the money

Bluffers 978909365407 11cm x 16 cm 120pp £6.99

For some years I have written a small column in The Sunday Times answering reader’s questions about matters cycling-related. It was not a job that made me a star of the dinner-party circuit – until recently. These days, such is the growing fevour around cycling, that before introductions and pre-prandials are over, new converts to pedal power are bearing down upon me.

“What do you think of titanium frames”, “which are the best clipless pedals”, “do you believe that Team Sky is drug free” – the questions reign down. For a while I basked in the glory (or in the case of the lawyers who sought my views, suggested that they make an appointment with my office so that I could ponder their queries with the meter running). Now, though, I am wearying of the attention. Henceforth, in social situations, I intend to announce myself as a medieval historian and hope that the success of Rob Ainsley’s pocket primer will provide a sufficient foundation course for neophyte wheelers.

Forming part of a fun series that includes similar guides to such rarefied pursuits as opera, poetry, beer and sex, it provides a lively canter through the world of cycling, as well as the prejudices and peccadilloes of its devotees. Celebrity cyclists, cities for cycling and carbon-fibre fetishism are all covered, as is the basic taxonomy of bikes and their riders.

It is a stocking-filler or a joke purchase in all probability, but unlike many books of that stripe, it manages to both funny, and dependably on the money.

TD May 13