Eric Liddell: an inspirational life

Chariots of Fire introduced me to Eric Liddell, the proud Scot who was born in China, the sprinter who would not run on a Sunday, the rugby international turned Olympic gold medallist.

What moved me in the movie all those years ago still moves me today: Vangelis’s stirring music; the human drama; Liddell’s unaffected goodness. However, as time passed, the details of Liddell’s remarkable life gradually faded from my memory, though the theme tune lingered for longer. I grew up, moved to another part of the country, and became a schoolteacher, leaving Liddell behind.

Or so I thought, but it has never been easy to out-run the flying Scotsman. Glancing back, I discovered that he was still there at my shoulder. My life had moved on but Eric Liddell could not be shaken off so easily.

We met again on the athletics track. Having skived games at school to avoid the misery of swimming lessons, I rediscovered my childhood love of sport in my twenties and threw myself into hockey, football, and cricket. Finding that I was pretty quick on my feet, I also joined the local athletics club.

Like Liddell, I became a sprinter. Like him, I loved running fast. Unlike the great man, I never became any more than an average club runner.

Nonetheless, I began to appreciate Liddell’s astounding success at the 1924 Olympics. Breaking the world record in the 400 metres when he had expected to run in the 100 metres was astounding. Clocking the speeds he achieved on cinder tracks without the aid of starting blocks or modern training methods was truly remarkable.

And then I discovered the rest of Liddell’s story, the story that Chariots of Fire did not tell.

Returning to university as a mature student, I worked on an MA in Chinese Studies, a course that proved to be extremely fruitful. Browsing in the library when I was supposed to be writing an essay, I was taken aback to find a book about China and the First World War. Even though I had a history degree, I hadn’t realised that China had been involved in the Great War. What I read became the basis of my novel, Between Darkness and Light.

I also read with growing amazement about Eric Liddell’s life after the 1924 Olympics. As an Olympic gold medallist, he could have basked in his new-found fame and made a fortune, but instead he returned to China. There he became a teacher in Tianjin before moving to war-torn Siaochang, where he lived a quietly heroic life.

There are many stories about his self-effacing actions during those years but the anecdote that perhaps best illustrates his character concerns a young Chinese artist who had been left for dead after occupying Japanese troops bungled an attempt to behead him.

Having rescued another wounded soldier, Eric was on his way back to Siaochang when he was alerted to the presence of the badly injured artist, so he saved him too, despite the obvious risk to his own life.

In the comparative safety of the mission hospital, the man revived and, as a token of gratitude, he gave Eric a picture of a peony which he had painted while recuperating. This painting reminded Eric “that hands of friendship still stretch out across the oceans,” as I put it in The Race, my first novel for children. “In that one simple picture Scotland and China are united.”

Sitting in a university archive with the painting and Liddell’s wafer-thin letters from China in my hands was a humbling experience. It felt as though we were shaking hands across the decades. I was inspired and just a little over-awed.

If he had been there, Eric would no doubt have put me at my ease because he never stood aloof from anyone, which is one reason why he adapted so well to life in a Japanese prisoner of war camp when war overtook the ex-pat community in the 1940s.

What struck me most forcibly about the many accounts of life in the prison camp was how much everyone admired Eric Liddell. No one had a bad word to say about him.

From a human point of view, he had lost everything. He had been separated from his beloved wife and children. He was no longer free. His work was in ruins. Yet he did not give in to self-pity. He continued to live for others to an extraordinary degree.

 In particular, he had a special heart for the children of the camp. For their sake, he organised sports fixtures and athletics competitions. For their sake, he even refereed a hockey match on the Sabbath.

Eric’s finest hour came not in the Olympics in Paris in 1924 but in a prison camp in China in 1944, his ultimate sacrifice being witnessed not by adoring spectators but by a crowd of emaciated prisoners and curious camp guards.

As I read about his life in that university library, I realised that there was a remarkable and largely unknown story here that needed to be told, but it took a few years before the opening words of The Race hurdled into my mind. I was out jogging with my eldest daughter, having given up competitive athletics a few years earlier, but as we ran together, I remembered the old days when running had been my release.

“When I’m running all my worries disappear and I concentrate on just two things: the race and myself. Not what I’ve done or what I’m going to do, what I think or even what I feel, but the real me that appears when I’m running. I am the arms that are pumping. The legs that are striding out. The breath that is pulsing. When I’m running I don’t have a body: I am my body. This is what it feels like when I’m running. When I’m running fast, I feel free.”

Those were the words that raced into my head that July morning, but whose words were they?

At first I thought they were Eric’s, but gradually I came to realise that there was another story to be told, that of a young Chinese-British sprinter in the present day. And so 12-year-old Lili sprinted into view and the book became hers.

But Eric did not disappear. As Lili prepared for the race of her life, Eric prepared for his. As Lili faced great challenges, she drew strength from the way Eric overcame his. The two stories began to interlink and overlap.

Lili was born in China before being adopted by a Scottish mum and English dad, so she was delighted to discover that Eric had been born in China, played rugby for Scotland, and competed for Great Britain in the Olympics. Her own complex national identity was mirrored by his.

What Lili and I discovered, in other words, is that Eric Liddell is not merely a figure from history, a hero from another age. His story continues to inspire us across the years. That is why my children still love watching Chariots of Fire. That is why I wanted to write a book that brought his story to a new generation.

I hope I have done the great man justice.

This article was first published in The Scotsman.