BACK in the 1980s there was a very popular advert on British TV for BT’s Yellow Pages in which an old gentleman eventually tracks down a beloved book, “Fly Fishing by J R Hartley”. Well, boxing has its own bibliophile by the name of Hartley, and he was quite an exceptional man.
I used to communicate intermittently with R A Hartley many years ago as he. Bob attempted to write a complete compendium of every boxing book ever published, both in the UK and abroad, and he succeeded in finding, and detailing, over 2,100 of them. For anyone seriously interested in building a collection of boxing books, and there are many of you, Bob’s book is an essential source of reference.
