The mystery man threw off his disguise and started to run. Furious stewards gave chase. The crowd roared. A legend was born. Soon the world would know him as the ghost runner. John Tarrant. The extraordinary man whom nobody could stop.

This introduction to the life and work of Bert Coombes should be valuable not just for its assessment of Coombes, but for the light that it sheds on the social and industrial context in which he lived. His writing articulated the social and economic injustice of contemporary capitalism.