Jon Hotten (born in

Aldershot Aldershot ( ) is a town in the Rushmoor district, Hampshire, England. It lies on heathland in the extreme north-east corner of the county, south-west of London. The town has a population of 37,131, while the Farnborough/Aldershot built-up are ...

Hampshire Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Berkshire to the north, Surrey and West Sussex to the east, the Isle of Wight across the Solent to the south, ...

, 7 January 1965) is an English author and journalist. He is best known for the books ''Muscle: A Writer's Trip Through a Sport with No Boundaries'' (

Random House Random House is an imprint and publishing group of Penguin Random House. Founded in 1927 by businessmen Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer as an imprint of Modern Library, it quickly overtook Modern Library as the parent imprint. Over the foll ...

2004) and ''The Years of the Locust'' (Random House 2009). ''Muscle'' was described by

Steven Poole Steven Poole (born 1972) is a British author, journalist, and video game theorist. He particularly concerns himself with the abuse of language and has written two books on the subject: ''Unspeak'' (2006) and ''Who Touched Base in My Thought Showe ...

in ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'' as "Superb" and by Giles Smith in ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its si ...

'' as "when it's not alarming, it's merely amazing". ''The Years of the Locust'' was described as "standing proud in the tradition of great boxing writing" by Richard Bath in ''

Scotland on Sunday ''Scotland on Sunday'' is a Scottish Sunday newspaper, published in Edinburgh by National World and consequently assuming the role of Sunday sister to its daily stablemate ''The Scotsman''. It was originally printed in broadsheet format but in ...

''. ''The Years of the Locust'' was optioned by Inflammable/

Warp Films Warp Films is an independent film and television production company based in Sheffield and London, England, UK. History 2001 – 2012 Warp Films was established by Warp Records founding partners Rob Mitchell and Steve Beckett. It was initially ...

. In June 2015 he published a novel, ''My Life and the Beautiful Music'' (Jonathan Cape). Hotten was a contributor to ''

Kerrang! ''Kerrang!'' is a British music webzine and quarterly magazine that primarily covers rock, punk and heavy metal music. Since 2017, the magazine has been published by Wasted Talent Ltd (the same company that owns electronic music publication ...

'' magazine from 1987–92 and currently contributes to ''

Classic Rock Magazine ''Classic Rock'' is a British magazine and website dedicated to rock music, owned and published by Future. It was launched in October 1998 and is based in London. The magazine publishes 13 editions a year, mainly covering rock bands from the 196 ...

''. He is the author of the popular cricket blog, ''The Old Batsman'' (since November 2008) and since February 2013 a frequent contributor to ''The Cordon'' cricket blog at

Cricinfo ESPNcricinfo (formerly known as Cricinfo or CricInfo) is a Sports journalism, sports news website exclusively for the game of cricket. The site features news, articles, live coverage of cricket matches (including Liveblogging, liveblogs and sco ...

. ''The Old Batsman'' also appears in ''

''. He is one of the co-writers, along with Sam Collins and Jarrod Kimber, of the 2015 cricket documentary '' Death Of A Gentleman''. Hotten has presented two seasons of The Nightwatchman podcast. He plays on the Authors XI

cricket Cricket is a Bat-and-ball games, bat-and-ball game played between two Sports team, teams of eleven players on a cricket field, field, at the centre of which is a cricket pitch, pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two Bail (cr ...

team.

Bibliography

* ''Unlicensed: Random Notes from Boxing's Underbelly'', Transworld Publishers, 1998 * ''Muscle: A Writer's Trip Through a Sport with No Boundaries'', Vintage Publishing, 2004 * ''The Years of the Locust: A True Story of Murder, Money and Mayhem in the Last Age of Boxing'', Vintage Publishing, 2009 * ''My Life and The Beautiful Music'', Vintage Publishing, 2015 * ''The Meaning of Cricket'', Vintage Publishing, 2016 * ''Bat, Ball and Field: The Elements of Cricket'', HarperCollins, 2022 * (with Geoffrey Boycott) ''Being Geoffrey Boycott: A First and Second-Hand Account of 108 Caps'', Fairfield Books, 2022

References

1965 births Living people Writers from Aldershot English non-fiction writers English male journalists English male non-fiction writers {{UK-journalist-stub