HIS is the story of a brave man and some of the good things that have happened since his death. A long time ago, I was at school with a teenager named Mick May—an insubordinate youth, whom I was convinced would come to no good. I was wrong. After a successful City career, he did sterling work in the charitable sector and was awarded an OBE. Then, in May 2013, a deadly tumour was found in his lung, with a terminal diagnosis of mesothelioma, a form of cancer caused by exposure to asbestos. A punishing programme of surgery and repeated ‘lines’ of chemo ensued, and Mick somehow managed— which clearly and unsparingly tells the story of his illness ‘interwoven with the joy and succour of fishing’, from the Test at Mottisfont in Hampshire to Tierra del Fuego off South America. It celebrates the invigorating experience of angling, as well as contemplating ‘the nature of death’. Yet, as his Russian guide Yegor once put it, he was ‘the one who is always happy’.
