An inspirational moment that still couldn’t change history

Playing The Enemy. By John Carlin, Atlantic Books, €15

There’s an ever-present danger of over analysing sport, reading too much into it and trying to make it more than it is. Better writers than John Carlin have fallen into this trap.

Here, he falls into it, too, with this sometimes interesting but ultimately overblown account of Nelson Mandela’s appearance at the 1995 Rugby World Cup final, where the South African leader ascended the ...