At the end of Chariots of Fire, two decades of a life are concertinaed into two sentences. “ERIC LIDDELL, MISSIONARY, DIED IN OCCUPIED CHINA AT THE END OF WORLD WAR II. ALL OF SCOTLAND MOURNED.”
That postscript-cum-epitaph is a teasing entry point to Duncan Hamilton’s absorbing biography of the man who won the 400m at the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris but is better known for refusing to run on the Sabbath. In an age when the routine is hyped and sport is riddled with corruption, vanity and petty rage, Liddell’s story is old and timely.
Many of us might think we know the basics, even if the 1981 movie Chariots of Fire doctored facts for dramatic effect. The Flying Parson would probably have beaten Harold Abrahams in the 100m final but was not for turning on a point of a principle. When British athletics officials told the China-born Scot that the Sabbath ended at noon in France, thus freeing him to win an Olympic gold medal in the afternoon, he replied: “My Sabbath lasts all day.” In his absence, Abrahams triumphed and spent decades convincing himself that he was the better athlete.
Liddell did win a bronze medal in the 200m — Abrahams did not qualify after too many celebratory beers and cigars — and then got his own gold.
It was a popular victory because, even in 1924, before promises of legacies and £8 billion bills, the Olympics were widely damned. Biting in the boxing ring and brawls on the rugby pitch segued into a fencing contest so bitter that two combatants staged a duel four months later and badly wounded each other. Against that backdrop, Liddell was championed as the keeper of Olympic idealism, proof, as Hamilton says, that the Games were not irrevocably rotten.
Advertisement
However, the real theme of Liddell’s story is faith and providence rather than fame and proving oneself. Hamilton’s book is a triptych — sport, missionary work, internment — and it is in the second section, from 1925 onwards, where things speed up.
A story about religious belief could be dry fare, but Liddell is too good a subject and Hamilton too deft a guide to let that happen. So after a preamble in which Liddell spends his days in China teaching science and drinking tea, the full horrors of a society riven by violence are recounted. An inspirational friend, Annie Buchan, tells of a father hacking off his son’s arms for disobedience; of unmarried pregnant women being buried alive; of gang rape. Later, after the Rape of Nanking in 1937, people are buried up to their necks so stray dogs will gnaw their faces. And over nine months 97 missionaries are kidnapped and 33 are murdered.
When the Japanese seized power, the dangers multiplied and Liddell performed numerous acts of derring-do. To combat bandits he took to carrying money in a hollowed-out loaf, and then he decided to rescue a man who was seeking sanctuary in a village temple after being slashed twice by the sword of a Japanese officer and left for dead. Although five others had already been beheaded by the Japanese, Liddell gambled with his own life by putting the man on a cart and dragging him 18 miles to safety. His reward was the man’s conversion to Christianity.
“The Flying Parson was championed as the keeper of Olympic idealism
Yet Liddell’s separation from his family as he pursued his missionary calling raises a question about the nature of sacrifice. Was all this selflessness actually selfish? Hamilton, who has twice won the William Hill sports book of the year, concludes his book in Toronto. There he meets the daughter Liddell never knew. Maureen speaks of a “monstrous space” left by her father after he made his family move to safe ground in Canada. “I used to ask myself, ‘Was he a deluded Christian? Was he as good as everyone said?’ Then I’d think, ‘How could he have been? He’d let us leave China.’ I was so confused.” Eventually, Maureen realised that by removing himself physically, he was able “to touch so many lives as a consequence”.
All Scotland mourned him when he died aged 43 in 1945 and so did most of the PoW camp where he spent the last two years of his life. Ill, weak and succumbing to depression, he died of a brain tumour, the camp athletic races suspended because of collective brittleness. The war had only months to run.
Advertisement
Before the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, the Chinese claimed that Liddell had turned down a Churchill-orchestrated chance to leave the camp, instead giving up his place to a pregnant woman. Hamilton says this is probably untrue, but peddling such myths highlights his international esteem.
His wife, Florence, said the Oscar- winning film was a “little too preachy”. Hamilton’s biblical dips are instructive, as when Liddell preaches on the etymology of sincere, which comes from the Latin for “without wax” and references a sculptor’s habit of covering blemishes and cracks. Liddell refused to allow himself any such insincerity, either on the track in 1924 or in China two decades later.
As another Olympic Games nears, I found myself wondering what Liddell would have made of the modern version. It is easy to imagine his deflation at the way Rio de Janeiro’s favelas will be airbrushed out of this summer’s coverage, a stoic shrug as the 100m final again takes place on the Sabbath.
He is one of the great sportsmen of the 20th century purely because he knew sport’s place. So, while some TV football commentators lost their heads and hailed this week’s remarkable triumph by Leicester City in the Premier League title race as “the greatest story ever told”, Eric Liddell knew there was a better one.
For the Glory: The Life of Eric Liddell from Olympic Champion to Modern Martyr by Duncan Hamilton, Doubleday, 372pp, £20. To receive this book for a discounted price, visit thetimes.co.uk/bookshop or call 0845 2712134