‘As with the sport itself, boxing writing is about so much more than physical combat – it’s about the dark drama of life and death in their totality. That Donald McRae understands this implicitly makes him one of the very best writers working today. I’ll read anything he turns his hand to.’ (Benjamin Myers, author of The Offing and The Gallows Pole)

‘About life, death and boxing, McRae beautifully melds those constituent parts, then transcends them, to recount a profound journey through the human experience in a way that only a writer of his immense talent and humanity could. Exceptional and unique. I can’t recommend it enough.’ (David Whitehouse, author of About A Son)

‘Nobody writes about boxing like Don McRae. But with The Last Bell he has written a book that moves beyond just boxing and grapples instead with what it truly means to fight. It is a book about knowing when to bite down and keep swinging, about knowing when to throw in the towel, a book about loss and defeat, and how we might, in the final reckoning, face those inevitabilities with a kind of a redeeming grace.’ (Keiran Goddard, author of I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning)

‘Don McRae has spent fifty years in thrall to the fight game. The Last Bell is at once a moving memoir and McRae's swansong as a boxing writer--a fine, vivid, and searching tribute to a sport than can be as lethal as it is uplifting.’ (Ed Caesar, author of The Moth and the Mountain)