Jon Hotten (born in Aldershot, Hampshire, 7 January 1965) is an English author and journalist. He is best known for the books Muscle: A Writer's Trip Through a Sport with No Boundaries ( Random House 2004) and The Years of the Locust (Random House 2009). Muscle was described by Steven Poole in The Guardian as "Superb" [1] and by Giles Smith in The Times as "when it's not alarming, it's merely amazing". [2] The Years of the Locust was described as "standing proud in the tradition of great boxing writing" by Richard Bath in Scotland on Sunday. [3]
The Years of the Locust was optioned by Inflammable/ Warp Films. [4] [5]
In June 2015 he published a novel, My Life and the Beautiful Music (Jonathan Cape). [6]
Hotten was a contributor to Kerrang! magazine from 1987–92 and currently contributes to Classic Rock Magazine. He is the author of the popular cricket blog, The Old Batsman (since November 2008) [7] and since February 2013 a frequent contributor to The Cordon cricket blog at Cricinfo. [8] The Old Batsman also appears in The Guardian. [9] He is one of the co-writers, along with Sam Collins and Jarrod Kimber, of the 2015 cricket documentary Death Of A Gentleman. [10] Hotten has presented two seasons of The Nightwatchman podcast. [11]
He plays on the Authors XI cricket team. [12]