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Eric Liddell's story to set Chinese hearts racing

Who knows how the Chariots of Fire story is likely to go down in communist China, but we are about to find out, writes Brendan Gallagher. Eric Liddell, or Li Airui as he was known in the Far East, was considered a godly, heroic figure in non-communist China, and now the modern-day Chinese authorities have agreed to let his story of Christian humanity and sporting excellence be told.

John Keddie's acclaimed Running the Race, a biography that places Liddell's sporting life in the religious context in which it was lived, has been published in Mandarin and will be launched in China next month - the land where the 1924 Olympic 400 yards champion was born, worked as a missionary and died in a Japanese internment camp.

Getting such a 'western' book, containing so much religious and moral content, past the Communist party censors is rare indeed, but Liddell has always been held in the highest regard in China.

Full story at the Daily Telegraph.