Cycling Books

With it's 1930s style graphic cover, and beautiful golden-lit photos of rather fruity lovelies in flowery dresses on touring bikes, Lost Lanes initially seems like a particularly flashy guide to a few home county rides for glossy home county people - a sort of bike riding meets Boden.

Anyone can do it. This, World Cycling Stripped Bare, shows you how.

Praise be that Mr Cornwell has come up with this idea. Cycling 2013 is a guide to almost everything going on in UK cycling for the year.

Velo	The Secret Race	The Cycling Anthology Vol 1	Raleigh 125 years	My Time
Mountain High (Saddlebag)

12 of the best cycling books we've seen in 2012

I'm ashamed to confess that I only have Issue 2 of Rouleur - so all of Paul Fournel's essays on cycling were new to me when his book Veló dropped through the letterbox.

Back in 1996, I wanted Tony Rominger to win the Tour de France. Rominger had grit, panache - and wore one of those glorious Mapei jerseys covered in multi coloured cubes. I still have one in the wardrobe. Unfortunately Le Tour was won instead by a dead ringer for Sam the Eagle from The Muppet Show - the angry, air-gulping Dane, Bjarne Riis.