'An enthralling account' Independent 'A fascinating book...researched with an awesome thoroughness' Daily Telegraph 'Hampton's excellent book should be compulsory reading for everyone involved in the 2012 London Olympics' Daily Mail Critic's Choice The budget for the 2012 Olympic village alone is already a billion pounds short. The likelihood of corporate sponsorship recedes with every day of the credit crunch. How on earth are we going to match the opening and closing ceremonies of Beijing, let along top them? Fortunately, London has been through just such hard times before in the run-up to an Olympics, and in 1948 it showed just how to run a fantastic Games on a tiny budget - indeed, make them all the better for it. Janie Hampton's book about the last time the Olympics came to London is a tale of female competitors sewing their own kit, teams ferried to the Games on red London buses and billeted in Spartan hostels or even army camps, and the main stadium being hastily cleared of greyhound racing to allow the athletics to take place. The total budget was GBP760,000, great athletes like Emil Zatopek and Fanny Blankers-Koen thrilled the crowds, and at the end a profit was turned! This is a book that becomes more relevant and ironically entertaining every day nearer to 2012. Janie Hampton is also the author of a bestselling biography of Joyce Grenfell. She lives in Oxford

Author Biography

Janie Hampton has written more than 15 books, from biography to fiction. She is the author of the critically acclaimed biography of Joyce Grenfell, of How the Girl Guides Won the War, and, for Aurum, the bestselling The Austerity Olympics, shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award 2008, and the British Sports Book Awards Best Biography 2009. She lives in Oxford.