Tag: Confessions of an Ageing Tennis Player

Julian Writes: the Audiobook as my Journey to Personal Salvation

I overheard Nick on the phone this morning saying the words “audiobook rights.” He said them casually, as if he were asking for milk. I had to leave the office immediately and stand in the stairwell to breathe.

An audiobook changes everything. It’s not just a format — it’s an experience. And experiences are what I market best (I said that once at a conference in Milton Keynes).

I’m already picturing the campaign: “Hear the Sweat. Feel the Spin. Confess Differently.” Could I narrate it myself? My voice has range — somewhere between a BBC continuity announcer and emotional gravel.

Note to self: research microphones. And acting lessons.

Confessions of an Ageing Tennis Player

Confessions of an Ageing Tennis Player

“I don’t like your attitude!” snaps “Serena Williams” as we square up over the club’s dubious grass courts. But I am “Andy Murray”, the greatest tennis GOAT ever, no really I am and you “Serena” are blocking me from my ultimate goal: chairman of our local club.

‘Confessions’ is about a man of a certain age – Lord Andrew John Paul George Ringo Murray of Kirkintilloch – who lived out his tennis fantasies when he was young and never quite moved on as he grew up.

The first of a series, “Confessions of an Ageing Tennis Player” is the must-go-to illustrated comic guidebook about our dreams and our disappointments, our failures and our triumphs.

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Bientôt disponible dans une librairie près de chez vous: Les Conquêtes Normandes d’un Tennisman Vieillissant

“Speak in French when you can’t think of the English for a thing—turn out your toes as you walk—and remember who you are!”  (The Red Queen, Alice through the Looking Glass).

Yes, you read it right: the sequel to the Confessions of an Ageing Tennis Player continues with the third in the series: The Norman Conquests of the Ageing Tennis Player, currently out on the Roland Garros practice courts in time for the French Open Grand Slam which plays out between 25 May and 8 June 2025.

The Confessions of an Ageing Tennis Player series tells the story of a man of a certain age – known to himself as “Lord Andrew John Paul George Ringo Murray of Kirkintilloch” – who moves seamlessly from sporting zero to hero and back again during Wimbledon in 2013 when Andy Murray was the first British male player to win there in decades. By the end of that story, he has not only become Sports Personality of the Year but also succeeded (he thinks) at being elected Chairman of his local tennis club. Buoyed by these immense achievements, he immediately continues his success by winning the Australian Open in Melbourne amongst much Covid-19 inspired delirium and thwarted love stories via The Courting Lives of an Ageing Tennis Player.

So what’s the next challenge in store for him? Well, the third in the ‘Confessions’ series, Les Conquêtes Normandes picks up from where Courting Lives left off and tracks the ongoing drama between him, ‘Serena Williams’ and ‘Phoebe Snetsinger’ in a race to see whether he can add to his Grand Slam trophy haul before he loses all grip on reality.

Illustrated by Paul Warren, Les Conquêtes Normandes d’un Tennisman Vieillissant will be available on 8 June 2025.

The Courting Lives of an Ageing Tennis Player

The Courting Lives of an Ageing Tennis Player

“Tennis belongs to the individualistic past – a hero, or at most a pair of friends or lovers, against the world.” (Jacques Barzun)

What happens after you believe you’ve won Wimbledon, conquered your local tennis club, and crowned yourself a sporting legend — when none of it was quite true?

The Courting Lives of an Ageing Tennis Player picks up where Confessions left off: with Lord Andrew John Paul George Ringo Murray of Kirkintilloch rescued from a burning raft of tennis rackets, arrested, and facing the small inconvenience of reality. Undeterred, our gloriously unreliable narrator sets his sights on an even greater prize — the Australian Open — while simultaneously navigating the far more dangerous terrain of love, obsession, correspondence, and self-delusion.

Told through a wildly inventive mix of match reports, fan mail, court transcripts, newspaper cuttings, ornithological “sightings,” and illustrated interludes, this is a novel that treats tennis as theatre, romance as combat, and ageing as an extreme sport. Along the way, real-world tennis mythology collides with fantasy, bureaucracy, and pataphysical logic, as Andy encounters rival “GOATs,” prison systems, phantom coaches, and women who may — or may not — be in love with him.

By turns absurd, tender, infuriating, and unexpectedly moving, The Courting Lives of an Ageing Tennis Player is a comic novel about the stories we tell ourselves to survive the fine line between confidence and delusion masculinity, ageing, and desire under pressure and the strange ways love refuses to follow the rules

Illustrated throughout by Paul Warren, this sequel deepens the world of Confessions while standing confidently on its own as a bold, original, laugh-out-loud meditation on ambition, attachment, and the enduring hope that the next match — or the next letter — might finally change everything.

Next stop: Melbourne. Love all.

 

£19.99
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International Women’s Day: our take on the women’s tennis circuit

Janice Owen celebrates the history of women’s tennis here:

A Waiting Story: We’re not getting any younger these days

So said the heavy athlete slumped on the bench in the men’s changing rooms, gazing at his cracked up trainers, sodden t shirt and pale blue shorts strewn across the floor. He’d had a difficult match on a squash court, being raced around by just a strip of a lad who had humiliated him over 3 games, 27 minutes and never ending memories of how things used to be, back in the day.

True, we sympathised. There was a time, back in the day, when we did indeed get younger with the passing of the days.

There was a time, way back when, when getting older really did feel like you were getting younger: as the days passed, your skin shone a bit more, your hair grew faster, and your torso shed pounds quicker, the longer you stood looking at yourself in the mirror.

At what point did the days do a volte face and far from getting younger as we got older, did we actually get older as we got older?

The Courting Lives of an Ageing Tennis Player

The Courting Lives of an Ageing Tennis Player

“Tennis belongs to the individualistic past – a hero, or at most a pair of friends or lovers, against the world.” (Jacques Barzun)

What happens after you believe you’ve won Wimbledon, conquered your local tennis club, and crowned yourself a sporting legend — when none of it was quite true?

The Courting Lives of an Ageing Tennis Player picks up where Confessions left off: with Lord Andrew John Paul George Ringo Murray of Kirkintilloch rescued from a burning raft of tennis rackets, arrested, and facing the small inconvenience of reality. Undeterred, our gloriously unreliable narrator sets his sights on an even greater prize — the Australian Open — while simultaneously navigating the far more dangerous terrain of love, obsession, correspondence, and self-delusion.

Told through a wildly inventive mix of match reports, fan mail, court transcripts, newspaper cuttings, ornithological “sightings,” and illustrated interludes, this is a novel that treats tennis as theatre, romance as combat, and ageing as an extreme sport. Along the way, real-world tennis mythology collides with fantasy, bureaucracy, and pataphysical logic, as Andy encounters rival “GOATs,” prison systems, phantom coaches, and women who may — or may not — be in love with him.

By turns absurd, tender, infuriating, and unexpectedly moving, The Courting Lives of an Ageing Tennis Player is a comic novel about the stories we tell ourselves to survive the fine line between confidence and delusion masculinity, ageing, and desire under pressure and the strange ways love refuses to follow the rules

Illustrated throughout by Paul Warren, this sequel deepens the world of Confessions while standing confidently on its own as a bold, original, laugh-out-loud meditation on ambition, attachment, and the enduring hope that the next match — or the next letter — might finally change everything.

Next stop: Melbourne. Love all.

 

£19.99
Shop now

The Courting Lives of an Ageing Tennis Player: dropping just in time for the Australian Open!

“Tennis belongs to the individualistic past – a hero, or at most a pair of friends or lovers, against the world.” ( Jacques Barzun)

Published in 2021, ‘Confessions of an Ageing Tennis Player’ tells the story of a man of a certain age – known to himself as ‘Lord Andrew John Paul George Ringo Murray of Kirkintilloch’ – who lived out fantasies of sporting super powers when he was young and never quite moved on as he grew up.

By the end of the story, he has (he thinks) succeeded at his final and most demanding quest of being elected Chairman of his local club: but in the minds of most of the rest of the world, he has become a complete social misfit who causes nothing but chaos everywhere he turns. Far from ‘preparing for government’ of his club in the New Year, Lord Andrew has in everyone else’s eyes been issued with a lifetime ban from the club and been arrested for arson.

‘The Courting Lives of an Ageing Tennis Player’ picks up from where ‘Confessions’ left off.

What’s the next challenge for the tennis player who’s just won Wimbledon?  It’s to win the next Grand Slam in Australia.  So, he goes back to his tennis roots, bades farewell to his club and sets off on his journey over the equator to Melbourne (also known in the ‘real’ world as HM Prison North Sea Camp in Lincolnshire.)

His desire to win the Australian Open in ‘Melbourne’ however is not as straight forward as he would like. He has an open prison regime to contend with, opponents who don’t play by the book and the ongoing attentions of another champion tennis player, ‘Serena Williams’ who has taken pity on Lord Andrew due in no small part to the guilt she feels about her role in banning him from their club in the first place. And lurking deep in the background is his spurned coach, Mrs Hacienda Buscando Stanley Carter (Hac) who has several scores to settle.

The Courting Lives of an Ageing Tennis Player brings our characters back together for another epic tennis final played out in the tennis courts of Melbourne, the magistrates courts of Liverpool and eventually the romantic wilderness of the East Lincolnshire coast line.

As with Confessions, we’re delighted to be working again with our illustrator, Paul Warren, who is producing yet another collection of memorable illustrations for the book.

You can order your copy here: