As a child in the 1980s and 1990s, with Francophile parents, I grew up devoted to the Tour de France. It seemed like an entirely different world: natty caps, improbable mountain breakaways, and heroes almost unknown to the British public, save for the aficionados.
The other major one-day races, along with the Tours of Italy and Spain, were as mysterious to me as the machinations behind the Iron Curtain. But for three weeks each summer, Channel 4 and ITV highlights gave us a glimpse of the legendary spectacle that is La Grande Boucle.
Cycling culture in the UK was not then what it is now. I remember being astonished by Lycra-clad amateurs heading out for early-morning rides while I was on holiday in France and the Netherlands. I was also lucky enough to see a few lesser races and one post-Tour criterium in France, and I loved the spectacle. Yet once home, I filed these experiences away as an eccentric continental pastime, like boules or electing Communist mayors.
British successes in the Tour in that era were few and far between.
The first British successes
One exception was the Scotsman Robert Millar, winner of the polka-dot jersey in 1984. His thrilling climbs in the Pyrenees and occasional stage wins, alongside crashes and near misses, gave British viewers a rare home-grown angle. He was fascinating not only for his results, but for his unconventional presence. Taciturn to the point of abrasiveness on camera, with long hair and an earring, he looked more like a roadie for a metal band – or the sort of bloke who owns a sci-fi and comic shop – than a top-class athlete.
As his career wound down and British cyclists began making more serious inroads into the Tours in the noughties, my memory of him faded. Then I came across The Escape (2025), co-written by the legendary cycling journalist David Walsh.
This is an astonishing piece of work. Part memoir and part biography, it traces Millar’s upbringing on a drab Glasgow estate, his unremarkable school life, his solitary habits and, eventually, his almost accidental flourishing as a cyclist. His amateur journey to Paris and subsequent professional career is charted in stages, interspersed with Walsh’s recollections of covering those Tours and his frustration with the Scot’s prickly, largely unquotable nature.
The book’s remarkable third strand
Millar’s successes alone would make for fascinating reading: the brutal dog-eat-dog world of the French amateur circuit, his early professional forays in smaller races for Peugeot, his later triumphs, his integration into French life, his failed marriage, and his frankness about cortisone and other drugs in the peloton all illuminate the often-murky world of the European cycling professional.
The book’s forays into the 1980s and 1990s are cleverly set against the Tours of the early 2020s and the rise of Tadej Pogačar. Walsh gives a vivid account of the relentlessly unglamorous life of the newspaper journalist – in his case, for The Times – covering the Tour day after day: long car journeys; basic hotels staffed by French versions of Basil Fawlty, the best accommodation having been booked months in advance by the Tour organisation; and late nights writing to deadline as the restaurants close. Learning that the man who broke the Lance Armstrong scandal often has to settle for a kebab in a one-horse French town at midnight, while shaking bedbugs from his duvet, rather punctures the image of the high-end sports journalist’s life on the road.
What makes the book truly remarkable, however, is its third strand. Walsh’s companion in the car and the kebab shops is fellow journalist Pippa York, who co-writes the book. And Pippa York was Robert Millar.
Millar’s journey and post-retirement transition into York are described with stark honesty, opening my eyes to the bigotry and lack of understanding many people face while transitioning – especially, in York’s case, the hounding by the British tabloid press that targeted her family and forced her to move house.
In the book, we learn of Millar’s painful realisation in primary school that she was different; her secret experiments with women’s clothes; her father’s discovery and his dismissal of it as teenage experimentation; and, most painfully, the concealment of her true identity within the macho world of professional sport.
Less a cycling book, more a memoir of a remarkable life
The result is often heartbreaking. In one scene, while training alone in the Alps, Millar – then King of the Mountains and a huge star – is filming a commercial for Kellogg’s. The hotel owner’s son is in the process of transitioning, and Millar is afraid to ask about it, despite desperately wanting to swap lives and live quietly as a woman.
To weave these threads together is a considerable achievement. In less skilful hands, York’s life could have been reduced to a simple dramatic timeline. Instead, Walsh and York make their relationship – sometimes spiky, always compelling – the book’s centre of gravity. Around it they place revelations about 1980s cycling, York’s tactical insights into the modern Tour, and the mundane details of their road trips covering the race. The result is a layered portrait of both writers: York’s more relaxed persona after transition, Walsh’s relentless fascination with Millar’s career, and page after page of immensely readable, often very touching exchanges between them.
By the end, The Escape feels like more than a cycling book, and more than the memoir of one remarkable life. That it manages to be funny, humane, technically fascinating and quietly devastating is some feat. No wonder it won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year: it is hard to imagine a richer or more deserving winner.
