Walter George, Peter Elliott, Ian Stewart, Derek Ibbotson, Liz McColgan. Now those are what I call great British runners.

And yet such has been the glory of British middle distance practitioners since the Second World War that these five outstanding performers have only made the second rank in a handsome new Athletics Weekly production entitled Great British Runners.

Selections like these, naturally, are open to argument, and some observers of the sport may feel moved to champion the natural right of one, if not more, of the aforementioned athletes to appear as one of the 12 leading lights in what is billed as Volume One of the AW Series (www.athletics-weekly.com £9.99).

Yet, when you look at the dashing dozen selected – who would you leave out from Roger Bannister, Dave Bedford, Chris Brasher, Chris Chataway, Seb Coe, Steve Cram, Brendan Foster, Kelly Holmes, Dave Moorcroft, Steve Ovett, Gordon Pirie and Sydney Wooderson?

In his introduction to the book, the UK Athletics chairman, Ed Warner, maintains: "Distance running is hard wired into the consciousness of British sports fans."

Few would argue that the picture on the front cover, that of Seb Coe in extremis at the 1980 Moscow Olympics as he makes up for losing in his specialist distance of the 800 metres by winning the 1500m title, is an iconic image in Britain's sporting history.

It's up there with Geoff Hurst powering home his third goal at Wembley to settle the 1966 World Cup final or Henry Cooper standing over the - temporarily - prone figure of Muhammad Ali, again at Wembley, three years earlier.

Many of the photos inside the front cover correspond exactly to the consciousness of British sports fans as well. Thus we have that emblem of running achievement, the picture of an exhausted Roger Bannister finishing the mile at Iffley Road, Oxford in 1954 which changed the mental landscape for all milers who were to follow him, an achievement he summed up succinctly in his running diary with a single entry: "3:59.4"

We have too the classic image of Dave Bedford, lean and powerful, out on his own with his Zapata moustache and red ankle socks. Inimitable, you might have thought, although Bedford's legal battle with a certain phone directory company have sadly proved otherwise.

And although the front cover shows Steve Ovett coming home a tired third in the Moscow 1500, the event he was supposed to win, Ovett's admirers can content themselves that the other required image, of him winning the event Coe was supposed to win, the 800m, is also there.

But part of the richness of this book is the extra photos, not so well known, which illustrate the stories with which we are so familiar.

There is a fascinating sequence showing Sydney Wooderson, the slight, bespectacled solicitor from Blackheath Harriers who set a world mile record of 4min 06.4sec at Motspur Park in 1937, stumbling towards the infield as American runner Blaine Rideout cuts in on him in a high-profile race at Princeton two years later. A crowd of 28,000 saw the British runner effectively knocked out of his stride in a race where he finished last, and argument raged across the Atlantic over who was to blame as the Americans claimed Wooderson had blocked their man while the British insisted Wooderson had been unfairly baulked.

It was a dispute that found an echo many years later in the transatlantic argument over the convergence of Britain's Zola Budd and home favourite Mary Decker-Slaney in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics 3000m final, an incident which resulted in the American falling – and then crying. And then, for a long time afterwards, complaining.

Another terrific image is that of Gordon Pirie, cheeks puffed out in the manner of the aforementioned Mr Hurst, creating an almighty, muddy splash as he makes his way down the flooded straight at the White City stadium.

As well as fresh images, the book contains many details with which this reader at any rate was unfamiliar. Like the fact that Wooderson chances in the 1500m at the 1936 Olympics, the only Games with which his career properly coincided, were effectively nullified when he twisted his ankle so badly while walking that he did not even make the final.

Or the quote from Chris Chataway, pacemaking assistant of Bannister along with Chris Brasher during the Four Minute mile (pictured) and a world record holder in his own right at 5,000m, after he had completed a recent half-marathon in Tyneside. "I run most days. I love it. I can't think why I spent so many years of my middle life doing silly things like smoking."



There are, too, a series of panels detailing the typical training weeks of some of the 12 featured runners, in which we learn, for instance, that while Gordon Pirie trained every day of the week, and would no doubt have trained for eight days out of seven had it been possible, our guilty smoker did nothing three days a week.

But exercises such as this are not primarily about the unfamiliar. Telling people's favourite sporting stories, as this book does, involves considerable responsibility. If any of the classic lines are missing, the reader is likely to react like a child disappointed by the omission of a familiar detail in a bedtime story.

So, here, we expect all the detail about Kelly Holmes's long and winding road to the double Olympic gold in Athens. We expect all the drama of Coe and Ovett's unexpected role reversal in Moscow. We expect the account of Dave Moorcroft's night of astonishing 5000m achievement at the 1982 Bislett Games, we expect to get the full mileage out of Steve Cram's 19 wondrous days in 1985, during which time he set three world records.

None of the expectations are disappointed; each story is expertly dealt with. Like favourite musical tracks, these memories can be played again and again.

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, has covered the last five Summer and four Winter Olympics for The Independent. Previously he has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, the Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. He is now chief feature writer for insidethegames