Private life of the world's most wanted

According to a new book terrorist Bin Laden, when not plotting attacks against the west, is a voracious reader and volleyball fan - LONDON: Apart from plotting terror attacks, Osama bin Laden is passionate about volleyball and football, and he's also a voracious reader who often enjoys quoting from the memoirs of two top World War II strategists, a new book has claimed.

According to the book, the world's most wanted man is an extremely useful presence on the volleyball court. "He's so tall that he doesn't need to jump up to do a smash," Britain's 'The Sunday Times' quoted author Nasser al-Bahri, one of the al-Qaida leader's former bodyguards, as saying.

The book, titled 'In the Shadow of Bin Laden', also claims that bin Laden likes playing football, preferably at centre forward, but he never takes off his turban; he's passionate about race horses too.

Moreover, the al-Qaida leader is an avid reader who loves quoting from memoirs of Britain's Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, one of the most inspirational military commanders of the Second World War, and former French President General Charles de Gaulle, the 38-year-old bodyguard says.

However, the book claims that bin Laden's domestic life is no bed of roses.

Though the al-Qaida was careful to avoid conflict with his four wives -- each trained in the use of a Kalashnikov -- he's powerless to stop the first, a "seductive" but uneducated Syrian from being fiercely jealous of the second, an older, more erudite Saudi woman whom he would often consult on issues of "Islamic science", it says.