Austin Collie and the Infinite Sadness: Sport, self-help and the true value of failure

Failure has never been more popular. Not least among the wildly successful, who’ve been busily redefining this crucial part of life out of existence.

Enter any of Britain’s remaining bookshops and you’ll find whole tables offering libraries of praise for failure. Barely a self-help business management book or a celebrity boastography or a self-satisfied meditation on mindfulness is published which doesn’t hymn the wonder of defeat.