Description

'This is a real-life Rocky story - one that puts Sylvester Stallone's Rocky Balboa character, Million Dollar Baby and Cinderella Man on the canvas' - Clare People

'The story of an underdog who rose from a nation in turmoil to take on the world in a bizarre fight' - Evening Echo

A Bloody Canvas: The Mike McTigue Story tells the story of how Michael Francis McTigue left Kilnamona, Co. Clare, to seek fame and fortune in the United States, only for circumstances to bring him back to Dublin where he would win one of the strangest world title fights in boxing history.

Set partly against the background of the Irish Civil War, it also tells of a bitterly divided people who managed to set aside their differences for twenty rounds of boxing before the guns started firing and the mines started exploding once more. But primarily, A Bloody Canvas is a biography. It tells how an ageing journeyman fighter found himself to be the right Irishman, in the right place at the right time.

This is the saga of an underdog boxer laced with wrenching danger and a panoramic sense of life from late eighteenth-century rural Ireland to the Civil War, to the heady days of the Jazz Age in New York and the desperation of the Great Depression.

Click here to learn more about the author

ISBN 9781856355360

About the Author

Andrew Gallimore was born in Wales but now lives in Dublin where he works as an author and television director. His previous books include The Devil's Gardens: A History of Landmines, and Occupation Prizefighter: The Freddie Welsh Story.

reviews

'This is a real-life Rocky story - one that puts Sylvester Stallone's Rocky Balboa character, Million Dollar Baby and Cinderella Man on the canvas'

- Clare People

'The story of an underdog who rose from a nation in turmoil to take on the world in a bizarre fight'

- Evening Echo

'Decades ahead of its time, it was the ultimate Rocky story - with a quiet man from Clare playing the role of the 'Italian Stallion'

- Irish Daily Mail

'You would hardly expect a book about a boxing event to read like a thriller. Depends, I suppose, on whether you know the outcome. Those who don't are in for an enthralling read'

- Sunday Tribune