Ronnie O’Sullivan

Any biography of Ronnie ‘The Rocket’ O’Sullivan risks becoming a list of his superlative achievements — but it’s because he’s one of the greatest snooker players of all-time that there are so many! At a brief glance, in his now-30-year career, he has won the World Snooker Championship seven times (tying with fellow legend Stephen Hendry) as well as an unprecedented seven Masters and seven UK Championships, giving him a total of 21 Triple Crown titles — the most achieved by any player in snooker history. At the time of writing, he is the reigning World Champion and is ranked as the number-one snooker player in the world. Among his other incredible records are the Guinness World Record for fastest competitive maximum break, has made more maximum breaks in professional competitions than anyone else, and has notched up 1,100 100-point breaks (250 more than his nearest rival). Quite simply, he is the greatest player the sport has ever known.

But, as snooker fans know well, there is far more to O’Sullivan than his long list of achievements; he’s known as the Rocket, not the Robot, and his flair and charisma at the table are what make him so watchable and why he has so many fans. He has famously courted controversy during his time, but he has also been open about his struggles with mental health and drug and alcohol addiction, as told in his two autobiographies.

Outside of snooker, O’Sullivan has a dizzying array of talents: he is an established crime author, has co-authored a healthy-living book, and was at one point one of the 1,500 best 10 km runners in the UK. All-in-all, he is a truly remarkable individual with a fascinating story.