# Hugh McIlvanney

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hugh-mcilvanney/828479>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [January 27, 2019, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hugh-mcilvanney/828479 "2019-01-27T12:39:03Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![bonzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)\
**Post date:** [January 27, 2019, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hugh-mcilvanney/828479/1 "2019-01-27T12:39:03Z")

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> [@](#):
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> We should have known that Muhammad Ali would not settle for any ordinary old resurrection. His had to have an additional flourish. So, having rolled away the rock, he hit George Foreman on the head with it.

While Google isn’t throwing it up, since I started a Dope thread on the death of his brother William - the great Scottish novelist who founded “Celtic Noir” with his Laidlaw books - I suppose it falls to me to do the same for[Hugh McIllvanney](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/jan/27/hugh-mcilvanney-friend-towering-presence-greatest-sportswriter).

Yes, this might count as a sports thread, since he earnt his crust as a journalist thereof, but he was the sort of prose writer one read regardless of his subject matter at hand.

(The quote’s from his opening to his [classic interview](https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/mar/05/hugh-mcilvanney-muhammad-ali-rumble-in-the-jungle) with Ali in the hours following the “Rumble in the Jungle”.)