The Tour de France...to the bitter end

Having started in 1903 as a publicity stunt for an ailing French newspaper, the Tour de France is now the world's greatest sporting spectacle. Back then, cyclists raced alone through the night, sometimes at the risk of being beaten up. Today's riders pedal 3,500 km around the French countryside, cheered on by huge roadside crowds and accompanied by the mighty caravan of media, sponsors and support staff that keeps the wheels turning. But one thing hasn't changed: the Tour remains just as awe-inspiring a test of extreme mental and physical stamina as it has always been.

The Tour de France...to the bitter end is the best of over a century of Guardian and Observer Tour reporting, with pieces about all the cycling greats - everyone from Louison Bobet, Tom Simpson, Eddy Merckx, Lance Armstrong to 2012 favourite, Bradley Wiggins. The book covers areas such as press reporting of the race, doping, tactics to crashes. Geoffrey Nicholson, Chris Brasher, Richard Williams and William Fotheringham, who also wrote the introduction, are just some of the top writers included.

Also available from Guardian books.

Climbing up the Eiffel Tower

Sad to hear that Guardian journalist, Peter Lennon, has died at the age of 81. Peter was a junior Paris correspondent for the paper in the 1960s, before leaving to freelance. He re-joined as a feature writer and interviewer in 1989 and stayed until 2005, although continuing to contribute pieces until quite recently. In 1967 he and French cinematographer Raoul Coutard released The Rocky Road to Dublin, a portrait of Ireland in the 1960s - a film that caused great uproar in Peter's country of birth. Read more about his life in the Guardian obituary and also New Yorker blogpost.

Peter was a brilliant writer so it was a pleasure to be able to use one of his pieces in the Guardian Book of Mountains. It's about a mountaineering triumph but not quite the usual sort of report as the following from May 1964 shows:

The article appeared in an early edition of the paper on May 4 1964 and was re-printed on May 26. Read more here.