My book on women's sports pioneer Alice Milliat is out now! 📚

Good afternoon! I hope everyone’s well and coping with the noticeable absence of the sun this summer. Fortunately there’s been plenty of sport to keep us distracted, and with the Olympics just a few weeks away, that’s not going to be stopping anytime soon.

It has also been an exceptionally busy time for me workwise, hence the lack of The Cherry on Top over the past couple of months. While I have missed putting this newsletter together, I’ve been dedicating a lot of my spare time to the promotion of my book on women’s sports pioneer Alice Milliat.

I am delighted and very excited to share that the book – La Vie Jamais Racontée: Alice Milliat, a French Heroine and Sporting Suffragette – is out now and available to purchase! I started to properly plan the book about two years ago, sent out proposals in November 2022 and began writing in September 2023. It feels amazing for all of that work to come to fruition and result in a physical copy in my hands!

The book tells the story of Alice Milliat, a forgotten pioneer of women’s sport who was around in the early 20th century. She pushed for the inclusion of women’s athletics at the Olympics, organised four Women’s World Games and advanced women’s football in France. The book, which includes a foreword by Fearless Women founder and CEO Sue Anstiss, also celebrates the sportswomen who were given the opportunity to compete by Alice.

The book’s publication has been purposefully timed for the run-up to the Paris 2024 Olympics, which will be the first ever gender-equal Games on the field of play. Alice was French, carried out a lot of her work in Paris and was arguably the biggest driver of gender equality at the Olympics in the 1920s and 1930s. So while we should celebrate the progress of women in sport this summer, we should also make sure we’re aware of the work carried out by the pioneers who came before us and how they paved the way for today’s achievements. As such, I hope this book goes some way to raising awareness of Alice’s work.

If you’d like to get yourself a copy, there are plenty of places to purchase online:

• Waterstones

• WHSmith

• Hive

• Bookshop.org

• Amazon

If you enjoy the book, please do leave a review on one of the above platforms. It helps drive discoverability of the book and hopefully Alice’s story will gain even more exposure!

Finally, I’d like to invite The Cherry on Top readers to celebrate the publication of La Vie Jamais Racontée with me on Monday, July 22nd at The Volley in Old Street. The evening will feature a discussion about the book with Sue Anstiss, a Q&A and a signing! Please come along if you are around – it’s free and you can register for the event here. I’d love to see as many of you there as possible.

Thank you for letting me share Alice’s story and an even bigger thank you if you decide to purchase a copy of the book. I really hope you enjoy it. That’s it from me for now – hopefully I will be back with a regular The Cherry on Top sometime in the near future.