Tag: Roland Garros

Julian writes: the Tennis Player Quartet Podcast. Episode 3: Les Conquêtes Normandes d’un Tennisman Vieillissant

Welcome, ladies, gentlemen, ball-kids and baffled bystanders, to another Julian Writes instalment — the podcast series that bravely asks: what if Roland Garros is less a tennis tournament and more a literary ambush? Alors… bienvenue, mes amis. (Nailed it.)

Today we’re going neck-deep into Les Conquêtes Normandes d’un Tennisman Vieillissant, where our “hero” — the ever-modest, entirely reliable, definitely-not-spiralling Lord Andrew Murray of Kirkintilloch — takes a polite tumble down a rabbit hole of grandeur. And who’s holding the ladder? Lewis Carroll, of course. The Red Queen practically runs the warm-up: speak in French and remember who you are — advice which Lord Andrew interprets as: become a legend immediately, preferably on clay, and preferably while hallucinating. Très chic. Très officiel. Très… oui.

We unpack the rhythmic pop-ups of the ball boys Dum and Dee (because nothing says “elite sport” like a nursery-rhyme metronome), and the moment his opponent Corentin Moutet commits the ultimate crime: he gets turned into a pig on court — a glorious little nod to Carroll’s Pig and Pepper logic, where reality is negotiable and dignity is optional. Mon Dieu. Quelle surprise. Ooh là là. (I’m fluent now, apparently.)

Then there’s the recurring “awoke with a start” motif — the book’s way of winking at us and whispering: this entire Grand Slam may be a dream-state. Letterboxes widen into walkways, tennis balls develop French accents, and the court itself starts behaving like a sentence that’s forgotten how to end. C’est n’importe quoi. Pas possible! Mais… voilà.

And just when you think it’s all pure nonsense, we drag in Jean Cocteau — that delicious phrase about being plunged back into the night — and suddenly the comedy has a bruise underneath it. Because these Carrollian fragments aren’t just playful flourishes: they’re masking something darker. A dazed, fractured consciousness. A man trying to narrate himself into glory… after a glider crash near Calais. Quel drame. C’est la vie. Je suis fatigué. (Emotionally. Spiritually. Grammatically.)

So yes — bon… on y va — come with us as we lovingly dismantle the “Greatest GOAT’s” fantasy layer by layer… until what’s left is not just satire, but a strangely poignant story of delusion, denial, and medical distress — served, naturally, with a side of French and a pig in the baseline. Bien joué, hein? D’accord, d’accord. And if any of that was wrong, look: on fait comme on peut. Voilà. À la fin!

Ready, steady…? Allons-Y!

(Podcast generated by JPS with a little help from Mork and Mindy down in the Podcast Basement)

Les Conquêtes Normandes d'un Tennisman Vieillissant

Les Conquêtes Normandes d’un Tennisman Vieillissant

The third in the “Confessions” series, Les Conquêtes Normandes d’un Tennisman Vieillissant picks up from where The Courting Lives left off and tracks Andy’s inexorable rise to become the greatest GOAT: or Greatest of All Times as they have it in contemporary tennis parlance by challenging for the French Grand Slam at Roland Garros.  But the thwarted love stories continue and take on a darker tone as his fans become more fanatical: ambition, delusion, unrequited love… it’s all here in…

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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.

 

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