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• “An Instant Classic” Daily Telegraph

  Football Book Of The Year at the British Sports Book Awards (2011) "was Anthony Clavane’s magnificent Promised Land. A fans-eye view of Leeds United over the years, Promised Land is an instant classic, standing comparison with Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch, although Clavane’s book concerns itself more with the cityscape that surrounds his beloved football club and less with the author’s own neuroses."

  Simon Briggs

  Daily Telegraph

• Promised Land: The Sunday Times ‘football book of the year’

  "This superb memoir defies categorisation...Clavane brings together a wealth of detail, allied with historical and sporting judgment, to produce the football book of the year."

  Nick Pitt, The Sunday Times

• Radio 2 non-fiction book of the year

  ‎"My non-fiction favourite is a book by Anthony Clavane...and it's a bit in the school of Nick Hornby I guess. The prose is beautiful. My wife, who's not a football fan, liked it. (She was) captivated by the prose, by the sentences, by the emotion. It could have been about anything. And that's the great thing about this book. A very very good book." Ian McMillan on Simon Mayo's Radio 2 show.

  "Reading Promised Land is like eavesdropping on a conversation between Alan Bennett, Howard Jacobson, and David Peace"

• Scratching Shed post

  "It really is brilliant how Clavane has tied the three strands of the book together." Read the review

In conversation:
Anthony Clavane and John Lake

Thursday 23 February 2012

7.00 – 8.30pm

Admission Free

PSL, Whitehall Waterfront, Leeds

glamourie.co.uk/events

One of a series of Dark Heart > M1 events curated by Chris Bloor and Derek Horton alongside the exhibition Glamourie at PSL [Project Space Leeds]

In Promised Land, Anthony Clavane argues that both its football team and the city of Leeds itself are typified by a combination of brash assertiveness and parochial anxiety. A north/south, Leeds/London dynamic (at work in aspects of Glamourie) will be the starting point of a talk and public discussion between Clavane and the writer, musician and novelist John Lake, exploring these ideas in some depth, and looking at the similarities and differences between the impact they have on different aspects of culture – football, visual art, the music scene, literature and drama.

Anthony Clavane writes widely on sport, arts and culture. He currently writes for The Sunday Mirror, The Guardian, Sabotage Times, Blizzard, Backpass and The Jewish Chronicle. He wrote the songs for the play ʻStill Waiting For Everythingʼ and he teaches non-fiction writing and journalism at the Arvon Foundation. His book about Leeds and its football team, ʻPromised Land: A Northern Love Storyʼ, won both Football Book of the Year and Sports Book of the Year at the 2011 National Sporting Club Awards. He has been commissioned by Red Ladder Theatre Company to write a play based on the book to be performed later this year, and his next book, ʻDoes Your Rabbi Know You’re Here?’, will be out in October 2012.

Anthony was born and brought up in Leeds. He went to Sussex University and taught History in various schools for six years. He then became a journalist, first writing for the East Anglian Daily Times as a news and feature writer and then The Independent as an arts and culture writer. He now writes about sport for the Sunday Mirror and has covered three Olympics and two World Cups.

He has won Press Gazette Feature Writer Of The Year and BT Regional Sportswriter Of The Year awards. He wrote the music for Still Waiting For Everything, a highly-acclaimed play which toured England, and teaches journalism, feature writing and non-fiction courses for the Arvon Foundation.

His book Promised Land: A Northern Love Story – published in 2010 and out as a paperback in September 2011 – was described as “glorious” by The Guardian and named both Football Book Of The Year and Sports Book Of The Year by the National Sporting Club – as well as sports book of the year by The Radio 2 Book Club.

A play of Promised Land, produced by Red Ladder Theatre will be launched on February 22nd 6.30 pm at the Carriageworks, Leeds.

What are the literary precursors to Promised Land?

There are four books which influenced me:

The Damned Utd by David Peace
Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse
The Hounding of David Oluwale by Kester Aspden
Kalooki Nights by Howard Jacobson

How different was it writing long form, a book, compared to journalism?

Having to write 80,000 words in a year wasn’t so tough, seeing I tend to write about 2 to 3,000 a week with my journalism.

I keep needing to have deadlines though – as I am needing at the moment with my second book. In fact, I should be getting on with it now, because it’s due in the end of March!

As we speak I’m in the British Library doing my journalism – a column about Joey Barton and an interview with Gordon Strachan – and once they are out the way, I will write – hopefully – 2,000 words on my final chapter of my second book.

So, so far, not really different.

The big difference for me is in the rewrite – or should I say rewrites. With journalism it’s wham, bam thank you mam (or sir). It’s all very immediate, the first draft of history/yesterday’s fish and chips paper (take your pick) and all that.

With the long form, once the first draft of a book is written, then the writing really starts. It’s like a sculptor getting his material and shaping it, and reshaping till it makes some sort of sense.

With Promised Land, I also kept going off to visit cemeteries and old ghettos and interview people.

Ultimately, though, a non-fiction book with literary pretensions (pretentious, moi?) is a history not a documentary. And I suppose my favourite form of writing, and reading, is literary history.

Promised Land fuses the personal and the political, the city of Leed, its football team and the Jewish experience. Why haven’t we seen this before?

The three subjects of football, Jewishness and post-war, post industrial cities have all connected, for me, in a political way. In essence, all three came out of the cold at the same time – in the socially-mobile 1960s – and became exciting vehicles for transformation. In the 1980s, all three – in my case Leeds United, Leeds Jewry and Leeds itself – seemed to return to the wilderness. There was a resurgence in the 1990s and now I’m worried that – in an age where out-of-touch southern toffs are back in charge – another return to the wilderness is imminent.

Joey Barton has been roundly mocked for his attempts at intellectualising on Twitter. Is this because Joey Barton is Joey Barton or is there a broader sense that football, maybe even writing about football can’t be serious?

I’ve always thought that Barton was a deep and enigmatic thinker – the Eric Cantona of our times. He’s as comfortable quoting Nietzsche as launching a martial arts-style kick at a Crystal Palace fan. The Bard of Shepherds Bush is the Premier League’s tweeter-in-residence and should be revered as such. Disappointingly, the last time I interviewed the Bartster – in conjunction with a select group of hacks – he confined his musings to The Smiths, Arsenal and Neil Warnock’s superstitions. His minders instructed us not to ask about Nietzsche, because Neil didn’t want a controversial piece. A few months later Neil and his superstitious ways are now history and, on his favourite social media website, Joey is tweeting very controversial things about his ex-gaffer. As Cantona would say: “C’est la vie.”

Okay, serious answer. Here’s a recent Barton tweet is: “Don’t/haven’t u realised over the last decade, I am at my best when u give me stick. I continually make u eat ur words. Do urselves a favour… I find it humorous u haters think ur negativity and sniping will effect me. I don’t want or need ur advice, praise, negativity… …or any other thing u offer. U will never effect me. I am far to driven for u. Thanks for helping me be successful. I love u all xx”

And we all love u Joey. I suppose he is an antidote, of sorts, to the sanitised modern reality of the Premier League, but he is no Cantona. “When the seagulls follow the trawler,” the French Judas once intoned, “it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea”. And who, in their right mind, could argue with that?

It’s easy to take the mickey – and I recommend Martin Kelner’s Monday column in The Guardian as the best example of tongue-in-cheek football writing – but there has to be some middle ground between the cosy inanities of Alan Shearer and the Brent-esque eccentricities of Cantona/Barton. I think Blizzard, Jonathan Wilson’s new magazine is a superb example of serious football writing. Brian Glanville has written seriously about football for six decades. And, at the moment, Patrick Barclay and the doyen, Hugh McIllvaney, are still writing great stuff every week. And there has been a welcome resurgence of serious football books. In the past, we had Arthur Hopcraft’s The Football Man and Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch. Now there is Wilson’sInverting The Pyramid, David Winner’s Brilliant Orange, Simon Kuper’s work, David Conn’s investigative journalism and a whole host of interesting new writers.

I very much agree. There’s always been a suspicion of the working-class autodidact. The Guardian writer, Barney Ronay, is another terrific sportswriter. Elevating sports writing, like Promised Land, to the elemental feelings fans have when following their team. Are there any new books in the pipeline? And if so, do you see it as the ‘difficult second book’?

At the moment I am writing a play based on the book – with music! It will be on at Leeds Carriageworks in June. There is a launch on February 22nd at Carriageworks if anyone is interested in finding out about it – 6.30 pm Carriageworks – because it’s a community play and we want the community to get involved, as actors, musicians, ‘extras’ or whatever.

Okay, plug over. I am writing the second difficult book as we speak. It’s called ‘Does Your Rabbi Know You’re Here?’ and it’s about the 150-year Jewish encounter with England through football, from the first penniless immigrants to the third and fourth-generation Jews who have helped shape the game. It’s a hidden history which no-one has written about before.

What excites me when I write – and read – is making conenctions that haven’t been made before. Whether it’s Jewish or Irish-Catholic or Afro-Caribbean, I am fascinated by the way outsiders try to become insiders. And what price they pay for belonging. Englishness is suffering a crisis in identity. What it needs to come to terms with, embrace even, is its fluidity. There is a Downton Abbey view of Englishness which people pine for, but the reality is that it’s a myth. England has always had migrants and migrants have always shaped England, often invisibly. It’s the tension between the myth of Englishness and ‘the Other’ – often an immigrant community – which has propelled some of our greatest cultural developments, from fish and chips to the Ealing comedies. There has been a similar tension, I would argue, in the way English football has developed.

You mention out of touch Southern toffs being back in charge. In your view, do you see any new ‘in touch’ voices to counter that? Beyond the usual oppositionalism and agitprop?

The antidote to the Downton Abbey myth has always been, for me, regional dissenters. From the northern new realists of the 1960s to the Manchester bands of the 1980s and 1990s. There is nothing as astonishing as the poetry of Tony Harrison, John Cooper Clarke and Ted Hughes around at the moment, although I love Simon Armitage and Ian McMillan. There is nothing as revolutionary as Boys From The Blackstuff either. But I would argue that a new ‘Yorkshire Noir’ movement is emerging, influenced partly by the mighty David Peace, and I hope it gets the national recognition it deserves. God’s Own Country to the rescue.

Personally, I think we need a bit more oppositionalism and agitprop, although that’s not the way I write. I loved ‘Big Society’ at the Leeds City Varieties, for example, which was a superb fusion of entertainment and oppositional-agitprop. Looking back to the 1980s, when Thatcherism ruled the roost, there were occasional howls of protests through northern writers like Harrison, Bennett, Bleasdale, Russell and the great Stephen Patrick Morrissey. I think Cameron’s attempt to appropriate dissent by saying he liked The Smiths or the film ‘If’ is laughable.

You’ve announced the ‘Leeds Movement’ in an article in the Guardian. How have your attempts to raise the profile of Yorkshire writers fared?

I argued in The Guardian that a disproportionate number of kitchen-sink writers who reshaped the English novel were from Leeds and its surrounds: Keith Waterhouse, Alan Bennett, Tony Harrison, Willis Hall, David Storey, John Braine, Stan Barstow – “throw in Jack Higgins and Barbara Taylor Bradford (and, at a stretch, Barry Cryer, who formed an unlikely comedy duo with Harrison) and you have the Leeds Movement.”

But I also pointed out that, unlike the Merseybeat Poets or the Madchester Sound, it was never officially acknowledged. The anonymity is all part of the charm.”Leeds has hugely influenced writing and thought,” argues Mick McCann in How Leeds Changed the World. “It’s just that no one seems to know it. It’s part of our Leedsness not to blow our own trumpet. To keep our feet on the ground, to not show off, to never get ideas above our station.”

Both Mick and I think that Leeds should big itself up more. So we are trying to produce an anthology of Leeds writing. And some of us are also trying to get a Leeds Literary Festival going. Watch this space

What shape do you think the anthology might take? Do you feel a responsibility to be ‘diverse’ rather than representative of the best of Leeds writing? Can it be both?

I really liked The Book of Leeds, which was the best of Leeds writing in the mid-2000s, especially Tom Palmer’s introduction. Peace, Harrison, Palmer – and great stuff from less-known writers. I envisage this new one being bigger and possibly more diverse. In the ensuing 10 years, lots more Leeds writers have emerged. I think you can be diverse and have the highest quality. These things are not mutually exclusive.

Anthony, you’ve worked across forms and genres. Are more contemporary writers doing this?

I enjoy writing books, plays, music and journalism. I hate the idea of being stereotyped. When you are introduced and someone asks you what you do, there is an immediate tendency to be pigeonholed. I do it myself. It saves time.

I love it when writers do something different – like Martin Amis’ journalism for example. I’m not a big fan of his recent novels, but his reporting on American politics in the 1980s was exemplary. I grew up reading Keith Waterhouse’s columns in the Mirror. I looked forward to his musings every Tuesday and Thursday. Now there’s a chap who could write across forms and genres. And take Storey. One minute he was playing rugby for Leeds, then he was hopping on the train to London to the Slade School of Art. He wrote plays, novels, films – and, as he was trained to do, painted pictures. He published some great poetry a few years ago.

The other thing that influenced me was the ‘gonzo journalism’ of the NME back in the day (the mid-to-late 1970s). I bought it during the punk period and even though the music was exhilarating and, at times, life-changing, the articles by Burchill, Morley, Shaar-Murray, Penman, Parsons et al were often better than the music. Sometimes it was pretentious crap, of course. It was the literary equivalent to listening to the John Peel show.

I suppose that fewer contemporary writers are doing this. Given the demise of the printed press, with high-quality journalists getting the chop, there is a tendency to specialise in order to guarantee your income.

A play of Promised Land, produced by Red Ladder Theatre will be launched on February 22nd 6.30 pm at the Carriageworks, Leeds. To find out more about Anthony Clavane.

Fanhouse UK 14/9/2011

At a London coffee shop journalist and author Anthony Clavane reels off a list of names at breakneck speed: “Sprake, Reaney, Cooper, Bremner, Charlton, Hunter, Lorimer, Clarke, Jones, Giles, Gray”.

“That’s my party piece,” he adds grinning.

This is the archetypal starting XI of Don Revie‘s Leeds United. The team that dominated British football for almost a decade, winning two First Division titles, the FA Cup, League Cup and two Inter-Cities Fairs Cups.

Clavane is a fan having been born in Leeds in 1960 and he grew up worshipping Revie’s much-maligned side. He has used the experience as the basis for his book, Promised Land, which collected a series of laudatory reviews upon release and went on to be crowned Sports Book of the Year at the 2011 British Sports Book Awards.

However, labelling it a sports book sells it short. Football is only one of the threads that Clavane picks up. As the title suggests it also explores the author’s Jewish faith as well as the city of Leeds. These three strands provide the framework for the book and it is testament to Clavane’s skill as an author that the interplay of ethnicity, city and football doesn’t feel trite or forced.

Clavane decided to write the book in the wake of David Peace’s wildly successful The Damned United, which focused on Brian Clough‘s tumultuous short stint in charge of Leeds United in 1974.

“I think The Damned United is a brilliant sports novel and the finest novel about sport in this country since This Sporting Life,” he says.

“But it is very much also about Brian Clough, about the Brian Clough saga and it is an exploration of the demons that Brian Clough faced.

“Leeds United is a background to that and I wanted to put Leeds United in the foreground.”

However, the book was not inspired by feelings of joy or happiness but rather despair stemming from Leeds’s relegation to the third tier following a prolonged period of upheaval.

“I felt in 2007 that I had to write myself out of a depression and the depression was based on the fact that not just that Leeds United had been relegated and in the third division for the first time in their history but that it felt like something was over.

“As I was approaching my 50th year I felt that this was a good time to reflect on how football has defined me, how Leeds has defined me, how my Jewishness has defined me [and] how the writers I like have defined me. It somehow felt that there were a lot of connections between all these things and if I could put it into a book it would help me.”

Clavane’s decision to combine the history of Leeds United with that of the city of Leeds and his own life story elevates the book above standard sporting hagiography. Indeed, the subtitle was changed when the book was published in paperback form to reflect this wider focus. “The Reinvention of Leeds United” became “A Northern Love Story”.

Gone too was the original cover art showing Billy Bremner lifting the FA Cup. Instead he chose an image of a child walking down a deserted street with a Leeds United scarf hanging by his waist.

“We were criticised, rightly, when the book came out for being slightly misleading. The cover of the hardback is all about Leeds United and the title and subtitle are Leeds United and yet the book is obviously about the north, it’s about [the] Jewish community, it’s about lots of things.”

Yet, as is to be expected, the football club features heavily, with the stars of the show, undoubtedly, being Revie’s side of the 1960s and 1970s and in particular The Don himself.

The Damned United cast Revie as Clough’s nemesis and it is obvious where the readers’ sympathies are supposed to lie. This chimes with the general view of Revie as someone who wanted to win at all costs and who sacrificed beauty for functionality – despite the fact that his Leeds United team was comprised of supremely talented individuals.

However, according to Clavane this is an unfair and simplistic assessment.

“I think it’s undeniable that from 1961 when Revie became manager to 1968 … [that] they certainly would introduce the kinds of gamesmanship that hadn’t been seen [before].

“[Revie] realised that the only way to succeed, or the only way to drag a team from nowhere into the first division and make something of them was to have this attitude of do or die.

“I don’t think Leeds were dirtier than the others but they gained a reputation for being dirty and that kind of reputation helped because teams almost felt beaten before they began.

“But then my argument is that by the time they won the league in 1969 – for the first ever time with a record number of points and only 2 defeats – Revie had realised that this team of awesome talent should be taken off the leash.

“Then for the next five years they became a team to compare with Real Madrid or Ajax in that they played total football.

“They were a beautiful team … why they didn’t get credit for that I don’t know.”

But at the same time there is a sense of unfulfilled potential hanging over that team. Under Revie, Leeds finished as Cup runners-up or in second place an incredible 10 times. To use Clavane’s words, they choked. Often. Considering their dominance they could and should have won much more.

“I think Leeds were a great team under Revie but they would have been an even greater team … if they hadn’t on so many occasions stumbled at the final hurdle.”

Perhaps the biggest mistake was down to Revie himself. The great Leeds team that he had built to his specification remained largely intact for the entirety of his stay. When he jumped ship, first Clough and then Jimmy Armfield inherited an ageing team full of players who wielded enormous influence.

“[Bill] Shankly replaced Liverpool’s ageing great team; Shankly himself was [then] ruthlessly kicked out of Liverpool, no room for sentiment there.

“[Bob] Paisley came in, built up a new team [then] ruthlessly replaced them with a new team; [Kenny] Dalglish came along and did the same. So Liverpool did it and had this sustained success for many years.”

Clavane maintains that Leeds could have done the same and gone on and thrived in the late 70s. Instead they remained fixated on the past and blinded by loyalty, so much so that it ended up costing them the greatest prize.

“If Sir Alex Ferguson was in charge of the 1975 European Cup Final team he would never have played for old time’s sake eight players who were the Revie boys.”

In the late 70s Leeds entered a period of decline and at the end of the 1981-82 season were relegated. Clavane himself stopped attending matches but not because of the team’s failings on the pitch, but because of what was happening in the stands.

“I admit that in the 1980s I stopped going to football matches. I went to university and discovered girls and politics and writing and music and all these things that were far more important.

“There is no way that that period of hooliganism could ever be justified.

“It wasn’t just high-jinks by a lot of adolescent lads. It was actually violent, sinister, racist and anti-Semitic … not to mention sexist.

“I felt I was colluding with the racists and I felt that it wasn’t just Leeds, I mean it’s not fair to say it was just Leeds. Hooliganism was the national sport.”

Clavane himself was a victim when he was set upon by fans while watching Leeds take on Anderlecht, an event he describes in his book with a comic touch that belies the shocking nature of the attack.

A couple of fans started asking him questions, convinced that he was not a real Leeds fan. They asked him where he was born and where he went to school. He gave satisfactory answers but they remained unconvinced. They then asked him to name the Revie Team. He named the starting eleven but forgot perennial twelfth man and local hero Paul Madeley. The oversight earned him a punch in the face.

Eventually football was cleaned up and although things are far from perfect today, the vitriolic abuse that both players and fans were subjected to has largely ceased. The change eventually brought Clavane back to the club he continues to love even from his exile in the south east.

And out of despair came hope.

Leeds were promoted back to the Championship and for most of the 2010-11 season looked like they were going to secure a place in the Premier League.

The club that had been gutted through years of financial mismanagement was about to return to the Promised Land. And then they choked.

Patrick White

The Guardian 17-8-11

Literature and sport are perfect match

“The best sports book I’ve read all year which is difficult for me to say as a Barnsley fan. A humane, witty and literate account of following Leeds through good years and bad, paralleling the fortunes of the city, of the Jewish community, and of Anthony’s development as a writer and a human being. And a Leeds fan! “

Poet Ian McMillan on the Radio 2 Book Club

Best football history: Daily Telegraph

“It is hard not to think of Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch as you read this marvellous cultural history of Leeds United. Among other things, it is a study of one fan’s lifelong passion. But while Hornby’s book was essentially an internal narrative, Clavane looks outwards, to the skyscrapers, shopping precincts and council flats that have transformed his native city. By the end, you understand Leeds United because you understand Leeds itself. And vice versa. Reading Promised Land is a revelatory experience, because it shows what a powerful prism sporting history can be for understanding the world around us.”

Daily Telegraph

“The book presents a compelling argument that Leeds and its United are umbilically bound: loathed beyond the borders, defensive, beautiful and brutal, with visions of greatness undermined by a wilful outsider status and crippling self-doubt. Mirroring his own love/hate relationship with the city, Clavane’s book is powered by a dynamic drama of the reactionary versus the progressive, the good versus the unjust, through Leeds’s travels from grimy industrial centre to “Knightsbridge of the north”. Promised Land is glorious…(it) will have an appeal far beyond football.”

Dave Simpson, The Guardian, 13-11-10

“Promised Land is a revelatory work not merely for Leeds fans but for those unfamiliar with the city, such is Clavane’s skill in weaving together the city’s history, Jewish heritage and sporting ambitions. A rich, complex book about football and fandom, origins and expectations, Promised Land is more than just promising; it’s absolutely brilliant”. Simon Redfern, Independent On Sunday

“Anthony Clavane’s excellent book is a fine achievement. Broad and general yet hugely personal; socio-historical but sporty; academic but approachable; partisan but even-handed; sensitive but unsentimental. It prompts the reader to evaluate his or her stereotypes, assumptions and attitudes concerning Leeds because it’s so well-written and interesting.” Tom Dart, The Times

The acclaimed historian Dominic Sandbrook, author of the superb ‘State of Emergency’, talks to Anthony Clavane about football and the 1970s. https://rcpt.yousendit.com/1008518411/a9014a6c48c86f622266371502748fac

Caryl Phillips interviews Anthony Clavane in Leeds: 21/10/10

Caryl Phillips interviews Anthony Clavane in Leeds: 21/10/10
‘The Promised Land?’

Prize-winning novelist Caryl Phillips interviews Anthony Clavane about ‘Promised Land’ at Old Broadcasting House, Leeds, 21-10-10

Caryl Phillips:

When I first met Anthony it was clear to me that he had a profound and encyclopaedic knowledge of Leeds writers: Keith Waterhouse, Alan Bennett, David Storey etc. We talked about Jewish migration to Leeds, which has a strange, symbiotic relationship to Caribbean migration. Certainly, in my case, many of the buildings and the streets that I walked as a youngster in the city in the sixties were the very same streets that the Jewish community had settled in, in Chapeltown, in an earlier era.
In essence, there seemed to be a triple narrative to Anthony’s conversation way back when, which crops up in his book, which has these three very strong narrative strands. One is about Leeds United; another strand is about Leeds and its writers – the way writers have emerged from this relatively small city in the West Riding of Yorkshire. And a third strand is about the Jewish community.

So the first question I wanted to ask is where did the book begin? Was there one of these narrative strands you felt a particular association with – and then the other two seemed to come into the picture? What was the genesis of the book?

Anthony Clavane:

Genesis is a good word. In essence, it came from my love of the Old Testament. The book is called Promised land. I am a Jewish atheist, which I realise is an oxymoron. As I have moved away from Leeds and the Jewish community and away from, to a certain extent, the football team – in that I don’t watch them very often – I wanted to celebrate what I considered to be a golden age in the history of Leeds, the north and British society. From 1960 to 2010 we have had fifty years of – and I think the spending cuts just announced have underlined this – a golden age; socially, culturally, economically, politcally and in terms of football. And also it was a golden age, I feel, in which an ethnic minority – like the Jews – could integrate into a northern city. Not in an unproblematic way; no-one can pretend that there wasn’t anti-semitism, racism, but I did feel that the story of Leeds, and Leeds United, had a secret history, which was how an immigrant community had been involved in Leeds United, and before them Leeds Rhinos, in the sporting identity of the city.

When I was a youngster I was steeped in Old Testament folklore. My favourite story was, and remains, the story of the exodus. Every passover, even though I’m an atheist, I still sit round the table with my family. I know Hebrew, I can read and speak the language, so I actually take the service. I love retelling the story – the book we read from, Hagadah, means ‘telling the story’ – and I want to tell the story of how a tribe, a people, escaped from their insular, parochial, provincial and, to certain extent enslaved, background, and tried to get into the promised land. To me, that’s the story of Leeds, the story of the communities who came to Leeds, whether the Irish and Jewish in the 19th century or the Afro-Caribbean and Asian in the twentieth century.

CP:

There is a line in your book, quite early on, when you say: “When my children were very young, they thought being Jewish and being Leeds were the same thing.” You’ve just spoken quite eloquently about this relationship and the hidden history of Leeds United you allude to very convincingly in your book which is deeply related to Jewish migration. I wondered why that was not the case for the black community in the city? Why has the Jewish community forged links with the club but why the migrants who came after them haven’t. I remember talking to Rio Ferdinand when he was here, when he was the club’s captain. His relationship as a captain to the Leeds black community was difficult; they didn’t understand why, when he went to get his haircut in Chapeltown, he was playing for that team. Historically there has been a division.

AC:

There are two points to make here. The first point is: this is not an unproblematic integration for the Jews. This is a problematic integration. I was reminded of that just walking from North Street to here (Old Broadcasting House) tonight, past part of what used to be a slum area of Leeds; the Jewish ghetto, the Leylands, in the early twentieth century. My father was actually born in The Leylands. That was where the Jews, who had escaped the pogroms of Eastern Europe, came into Leeds and called it the promised land, a new Jerusalem. They referred to it as a kind of paradise. They became quickly disillusioned, of course, as every immigrant group has been. Over 150 years, integration has taken place. It has been, by and large, a positive, successful integration. But at the beginning there was anti-semitism. There are many examples. But in response to anti-semitism, the community looked first to rugby league and then to football as a way of belonging, of integrating. I studied, historically, what had happened. I went back to Tony Collins’ fantastic article on the Leeds Parish Church rugby team. It was a flagship of muscular Christianity. The Jewish community became passionately involved in it. It was closed down because of its rough play – attacking referees, a violent crowd (echoes with Leeds United) – but also because it attracted the Jewish working-class community; a community that was neither muscular nor Christian. That community was still working class for the next two generations. My generation was the first to break away from the ghetto. We did it through football, not rugby league. Elland Road was my first experience of mixing with non-Jewish people.

If you are black it’s different. It is more noticeable. But I still felt the lack of comfort of being there. When we celebrated a goal, it was a moment of transcendence. It didn’t matter who you were standing next to. You would embrace them. You yourself have called it a ‘moment of transcendence’. A wonderful phrase. All the differences you have – black and white, Jewish and non-Jewish, different classes – were transcended by that ecstatic moment of Leeds United scoring a goal. But, as you also tellingly pointed out, some of the fans you celebrated with would still make monkey noises when they saw a black player. I never experienced that.

The second point is that Albert Johanneson was hero-worshipped by Leeds fans. He lived near me in Moortown. I write about Albert in the book. A book needs to be written about the tragedy of Albert. One of the greatest players I’ve ever seen. He scored an amazing goal against Newcastle. Hemmed in by three players, he escaped them and scored – a metaphor really. But contrast his experience with Lucas Radebe’s, who also came to Leeds from South Africa, and also became a hero. By the time of Lucas, 30 years after Albert, we had moved, supposedly, into a new era of post-industrial, post-modern, cosmopolitan, multicultural Leeds. He was at the Millennium Square when it was opened by Nelson Mandela. It felt to me that Leeds was moving away from its racist image, its image of a cold, unforgiving town, and I felt this was a breakthrough.

The racism you suffered in the 70s and 80s wouldn’t begin to compare with the anti-semitism I occasionally encountered. So did you feel in the 1990s and noughties, Elland Road was again the place for you to be? Because, as I write in ‘Promised Land’, you yourself boycotted the club back in the 1980s.

CP:

So did you. All I will say is two words: Bowyer and Woodgate. They should never have played for Leeds again. I don’t think things changed that much. But let’s move on. I’m interested in the research. Let me read something else from your book: “My paternal great-grandfather, Phillip Clavanski, arrived in the city in the first year of the twentieth century. He was one of two million Jews who fled the Russian Empire following the assassination of Tsar Alexander II. He came over in 1900 – his wife Maria following him a year later – sharing his boat with cattle which needed constant mucking-out. On his arrival at Leeds station, he was taken on a handcart to the Jewish ghetto. His ‘driver’ was a kind Irish boxer called Jimmy Gilmour who, when drunk, was known to fight lamp-posts with his bare fists. As they approached the ghetto, Jimmy – who spoke a bit of Yiddish – called out ‘Mir zanen do’, which means ‘We are here’. Phillip said that those were the three best words he’d ever heard.”

There are these terrific moments of imaginative evocation of your past in this book which led me to wonder about the research. You’ve recreated something that you obviously didn’t see. You’ve done it very evocatively. Who did you speak to? Did you go to Leeds Library? I know you’ve imagined these were the first words. How did you create this Leeds that spans over a century?

AC:

The first thing I did was talk to my parents and their generation, who are in their late 70s and early 80s. I thought, and still think, that when that generation passes away, how will we know about these things? I fear that my generation will not know, and that my children will not know. Interestingly they’ve never talked about it before. Every time I found out about Chapeltown or Cantors fish and chip shop or The New Synagogue, now a dance school, I asked them questions. But they wouldn’t talk about it.

But one of my great-uncles was a rabbi. He went into the reform movement, and he was ostracised for this by the orthodox movement, so he went on the road. And he took me as a child to all these synagogues in Chapeltown, like Louis Street and Reginald Terrace and the New Synagogue. They were small congregations of very elderly people. I used to sing to them. Uncle Sam taught me about everything – Jewish history in Leeds as well as Jewish mysticism and the Torah – and his stories formed a very powerful part of my folk memory. I used to reimagine what it was like. But I also went to another great-uncle – Louis – the community’s unofficial historian. His contemporaries didn’t want to talk about the pogroms, the Leylands, the Chapeltown era. Let’s not talk about the past. 1960 was Year Zero. But Louis wrote a play called They Came To Leeds. It seemed a funny title to me back then, a preposterous notion that Leeds would be this kind of magnet for immigration. But it was. And the play was partly set in the Jewish cemeteries, above Elland Road, and the funeral processions that would be attacked, would be pelted with stones by non-Jewish mobs. Another story was about Jimmy Gilmour, an Irish Catholic boxer, a legend; there were touts who would try to exploit the immigrants at the railway statation. Louis said the one man they all looked out for was ‘Jimmy The Jew’; this was the greatest compliment they could give him. He learned Yiddish and befriended the Jewish community. He didn’t rip them off. He took them on his handcart to the ghetto, from Leeds Station, past the Parish Church, the market, to the Leylands. To their fellow villagers. They were eternally grateful to Jimmy Gilmour.

And these stories I’d find out from my grandparents’ generation. But my parents generation were not interested, had no sense of their history. I resented this. I thought they were losing their heritage. Chapeltown is a fantastic site of memory. They are my parents and grandparents’ memories. But I would walk the streets of Chapeltown and try to recreate in my own mind what happened there. It’s great that Cantors fish and chip shop is still there. That was the Jewish fish and chip shop, the best in Leeds, better – I would argue – than either Bryans or Harry Ramsdens. Although I accept this might be the most controversial point of the evening.

CP:

Why were they reluctant to talk about these things? And you got if from their grandparents?

AC:

In a way it seems obvious. They were reinventing themselves. They wanted to stop being the old Yiddish ghettoised Jews. They wanted to be the new Jews, British Jews, Leeds Jews; making our way in, being an integral part of, Leeds. We are Leeds. Singing this at Elland Road was – is – a very powerful thing for me. It’s an attempt not to be defined wholly in terms of our ethnicity, our outsiderness, our Otherness. I am Leeds, you are Leeds, he is Leeds, we are Leeds. That explains the passionate attachment of that generation to Leeds United. The generation that produced Manny Cussins, Leslie Silver, Arnold Ziff – they felt they were belonging to the city; but also they were erasing the past, and that’s a sadness. My generation has to rescue, to restore the past, or at least talk about it. If we don’t it will be gone forever and no-one will know what really happened. Which is my biggest fear. I also wanted to deconstruct myths, for example the steterotype of rich Jews. The Jewish working-class community had a struggle, a fight for acceptance, and they won the fight. And that’s what I’m most proud about. But, ironically, that’s the thing they don’t talk about.

CP:

It comes through very strongly and movingly in your book, and the way you stitch it in to the history of Leeds is very touching. Let’s move on to the second panel of the triptych that is your book. You describe Keith Waterhouse, John Braine and David Storey as a “crack force of writers” who emerged from the West Riding in the sixties. I wondered what it was you thought they were writing about thematically, what it was they had to say that was different from a Sillitoe, Osborne, Wesker? They were the forward line, the crack force, but what made them different from all the other angry young men?

AC:

In a way they are all lumped together – the angry young men and the kitchen sink writers. Nearly all of them came from the north. What is the difference? Why is Leeds different? In one way it stands for the north. The north invaded London in the sixties. The north re-energised Britain in the sixties: the Beatles, David Hockney, Harold Wilson, a Huddersfield grammar schoolboy. The north as an entity is problematic. But the West Riding of Yorkshire, particularly Leeds, has Storey, Harrison, Bennett, Wain. Their narratives, or tropes, were different. For one thing, they were more doom-laden. And, I would argue, more parochial. Or more resigned to the region’s parochialism.

CP:

What was it in the air?

AC:

It’s the same question as why did rugby league have more of a grip on West Yorkshire than football. Rugby league embodies, to me, a kind of parochialism – the kind that Revie’s Leeds were trying to escape; trying to transcend the confines of your narrow provincial backwater and become a national, European, international, global force – that’s what football offered. That’s why Revie changed the club’s strip to Real Madrid’s all white. For Revie read Waterhouse and Billy Fisher; the story of Leeds is embodied by Billy not getting on the train; choking. The Beatles showed Liverpool as a world conquerer, Best’s Man United – they conquered the world. The cold, unforgiving, gritty, brutal north – as explored by The Damned United – or David Storey’s This Sporting Life, is very west Yorkshire. Frank Machin, Billy Fisher – these are anti-heroes who are doomed to failure; this sense of feeling doomed, that we’re The Damned United, is very Leeds.

CP:

So these writers had a thematic coherence around choking?

AC:

Yes. Billy Fisher goes to Leeds Station and doesn’t catch the train. Why not? Julie Christie’s on it, why wouldn’t you? She embodied the liberation of the swinging sixties.

CP:

That era was about mobility, literally and metaphorically. So you’d say these writers represented a kind of knee-jerk inability to cross that threshold?

AC:

Yes

CP:

This book has a terrific triple-narrative thrust going on, but there is a moment halfway through the book when it seems to come together wonderfully. Let me read from a later section: “As I approached my fiftieth year, I began to have a recurring dream. Keith Waterhouse, Alan Bennett, Tony Harrison and David Storey were all sitting in the Jazz Age bar of the Queen’s Hotel, which is built into Leeds station. They were all in their late-forties, wearing yarmulkes and tuxedos and appeared to be guests at my bar mitzvah. As they talked to Don Revie, trying to distract his attention away from some mysterious event that was about to happen, my dad walked in smoking a cigar. In some versions of the dream, Louis Armstrong and my great-auntie Millie strolled in, arm in arm. The dream always ended the same way. The
oak double doors swung open and Variety Club host Marshall Bellow, who used to sit behind my mum’s family in shul, suddenly appeared. He was quickly
followed by Eamonn Andrews. And, just as Andrews was about to say ‘Tonight, Don Revie, this is your life’ – I woke up.”

This suggests to me a tremendous confusion. What on earth is going on? You have your writers, you have Don Revie, you have your barmitzvah, all in one paragraph swirling around. It’s a terrific narrative moment in the book. It pulls everything together. It’s feverish, it’s confused.

AC:

I saw Don Revie on ‘This Is Your Life’ in 1974. Leeds had just won the League title. 1974 is such a crucial year. Two elections, the miners strike…it was a big turning point. I remember watching ‘This Is Your Life’ and thinking ‘it’s Don Revie, in the Queen’s Hotel, where my dad used to work’ and Marshall Bellow, who I see in shul every week, he’s there. It felt that everything was connected. I’d see Revie at barmitzvahs and weddings. He’s not Jewish. Today, you can’t imagine anyone living near Ferguson, say. Could you imagine that across the road where I lived was Don Revie in his semi-detached house? That was extraordinary to me. Saturday was the Rebbe in the morning, Revie in the afternoon. 1974 was the great moment, we were about to be on top of the world. And then – in typical Leeds style – it all went wrong. Revie went to England, Clough came in…

CP:

So it was a key period for you. You begin one chapter with this sentence: “Leeds is a schizophrenic city…” Which I didn’t really understand until I got to the dream sequence. Explain what you mean by that.

AC:

Every time I come back to Leeds I see the Town Hall. When Leeds became an industrial city, it had this monument to ambition, the tower. As was Elland Road. But go beyond the shiny civic centre and you’ll see the forgotten people of Leeds, the dispossesed of northern Britain. I’m not singling Leeds out as being unique. It’s a similar story in Manchester, Liverpool and so on. It’s schizophrenic because we sing ‘We are the champions of Europe’ and the next minute we sing ‘We’re not famous any more’. From the greatest team in football to ‘we’re shit and we know we are’. The building of the town hall, a lot of people opposed it , called it Brodrick’s folly. Lumiere was supposed to be a symbol to the high ambition of Leeds – now there’s a hole in the ground. That is symbolic of the thwarted ambition of Leeds.

CP:

Speaking of thwarted ambition, let’s look at Leeds United. I don’t know if I found this both irritating and refreshing, but the sense that Leeds United fans think they are jinxed – you argue it’s something we have to disabuse ourselves of quickly if we are to move on.

AC:

Well, it’s not very scientific is it?

CP:

It’s not very scientific, but there is something comforting about thinking the world is against you, about being able to say we were robbed in Paris, robbed in the Cup Winners Cup Final, when the ref was cleearly bought by Milan…

AC:

And West Brom

CP:

Yes, Ray Tinkler. There’s something really comforting in going back 35 years and tracing the litany of crimes that have been perpretrated against Leeds United. But you seem to be suggesting we need to get rid of that. We need to clear our heads of this notion that we are perennial victims.

AC:

That’s because I don’t believe in conspiracy theories. There is no conspiracy against Leeds. Full stop. Of course not. Why should there be?

CP:

In about two hours, after a few drinks, you are going to be talking about the conspiracy against Leeds…One of the first things this man said to me was: ‘I’m going to say two words to you: Ray Tinkler…’ That bastard, 1971 wasn’t it?

AC:

So you think there is a plot?

CP:

No, as I say I found it refreshing. But at the back of your mind I don’t believe it’s totally been flushed out.

AC:

No, that’s true. When I’m in Leeds and I’m drinking with Leeds fans I start to believe the conspiracy theory. And as soon as I leave Leeds and I get on the train, like Billy Fisher should have done – and join Julie Christie in London – my view becomes more rational. Christie’s Liz represented that moving away from superstition and, conspiracy theories, of a comforting sense that they’re all out to get us, they all hate us and we don’t care – which is ultimately damaging to Leeds’ sense of itself as a powerful, cosmopolitan, outward-looking city. You can’t be those things if you actually seriously believe that those southern bastards are out to get us, that there is a world conspiracy against Leeds. There isn’t. Every successful football time has that narrative running through its history. They are just as paranoid. But it was exarcebated by Don Revie, genius that he was – his superstition, his fatalism was very damaging. He even went as far as trying to remove a gypsy curse from Leeds, he brought her in to Elland Road, and she went to all four corners of the ground and urinated. And of course she lifted the curse! And Leeds started to win things! None of us believe that happened, though, do we?

This amazing manager, who has been shamefully airbrushed from history…he had his foibles. His sense of fatalism was damaging. That no matter what you do, how hard you work, how much talent you have, how much you put into something, ultimately They – Fate, the gods, Ray Tinkler – will stop you from realising your ambition.

CP:

And you see this narrative clearly in the themes of the writers, in the overarching development of the city. We are about to find out, in the next few years, very quickly in this city, which relies so heavily on public sector employment, whether or not that upward climb of Leeds is going to be maintained.

You say very eloquently in the book, that if you left Leeds ten or 15 years ago or 20 years ago and come back, that it just looks different, apart from anything else. Navigating your way around is different, but the emotional relationship with Leeds has also changed somewhat I think, too. I just want to say, not as his agent, nor as a Julie Christie stand-in, but as his friend, I want to say I think this is a really wonderful book. I know it’s for sale right there, but anyone interested in the history of Leeds, interested in the history of Leeds as a migrant city, in Leeds United, in the narrative of sport, this is a terrific book, and I’m very happy to have had the chance to speak to you for an hour about it.

Any questions?

Question:

This schizophrenia. Isn’t it a class thing? You have Harvey Nicks, but also East End Park, where girls are selling themselves…is the writers’ doomy feeling connected with what went wrong with Leeds comedians. Where are the great Leeds comedians, the great music from Leeds from the 1960s?

AC:

If you went to Elland Road the other night you’d see the Leeds comedians! Your second point is very good. It is interesting that Liverpool and Manchester have great traditions of literature and music. I can name you, instantly, ten Manchester bands I love. Where is the Leeds Stone Roses, Joy Division, Fall, Morrissey? Why haven’t we got the same profile in popular culture as those cities have? I do think it is related to the football. It’s no coincidence that Liverpool and Manchester, over the 50 years we’re talking about, had mainly successful periods. Why have they never had the lows that Leeds United had? You can count our popular cultural icons on the fingers of one hand.

Q:

The traditional answer is a Lancashire-Yorkshire thing. We have gruff, bigoted men. The rise of Yorkshire in the present government for example.

AC:

So what is it about Yorkshire that should produce a Geoff Boycott or an Eric Pickles? Are we saying this is an inevitable product of Yorkshire-ness? It’s not a very scientific observation. I think we should deconstruct this myth. There have been comedians from Leeds. Like Barry Cryer, but not as high profile. The writers from Leeds have never been given the credit they deserve. The Merseybeat Poets are a movement. As is the Madchester Sound. Do people see Caryl Phillips, Alan Bennett, Keith Waterhouse as Leeds writers? As a Leeds movement? No. So it’s not that there aren’t great writers, musicians, footballers – it’s a sense of identity, of self-image, but also of how we are perceived as well as how we perceive ourselves. We don’t promote ourselves with the same swagger that Manchester or Liverpool promote themselves. Swagger, of course, isn’t something Boycott is lacking. But just to focus on the Boycott-Trueman axis is wrong. Bennett is a typical Yorkshireman, but he’s hardly fitting that stereotype of bigoted. For every Boycott, there’s a Bennett.

Q:

I’m quite attracted to your doom-laden, parochialism thesis. The black guys I know who are keen on soccer are Leeds United fans. CLR James wrote about cricket expressing a physical force against white teams – and that’s my friends play soccer. During the 70s and 80s and adored Leeds United. But they are also parochial; some are talented musicians but they don’t project themselves very much. Then there is Alan Bennett, who stays in the north and sees himself as a northerner. His writing is full of gloom. There is something oddly withdrawn and fatalistic about Leeds, which is one of the reasons I like it.

AC:

Yes, you’ve turned my criticism on its head. To be self-critical, I’m probably criticising Leeds out of frustration that we haven’t got the profile nationally and internationally that we deserve. Having lived down south for 20 to 30 years, that’s the image people have of Leeds. In Dominic Sandbrook’s new history of the 70s, he describes Leeds as a cold, unforgiving town. Just repeat that enough times…

CP:

Dickens said that about Leeds in the nineteenth century; it’s an old, deeply-inscribed narrative. It’s extremely difficult to uproot and turn over. Leeds City Council tried very hard in the living memory of everybody here. But it is a profoundly deep narrative, this notion of an unforgiving, gloomy place.

Q:

There’s a paradox about Leeds. In the early 60s, Leeds Art School was seen as the most revolutionary art school in the country. We produced great poets: Jon Silkin, Jeff Nuttall. I did a study of the Brick Man and compared it to the Angel Of The North. The Brick Man failed and the Angel succeeded. Leeds could have had it’s own Angel Of The North years before…

AC:

My case rests.

Q:

…there were very interesting, complex reasons why it failed. They were endemic in the Leeds cultural hierarchy, although it’s beginning to change – a lack of risk-taking. The council doesn’t want the Evening Post telling them they’re wasting money on culture. Self-made industrialists: don’t want any of that kind of nonsense. It’s frustrating because there are a lot of exciting things going on in Leeds.

AC:

The Brick Man was opposed by the EP, they had a campaign against it, and the Conservatives on the council. That couldn’t symbolise more, like the Lumiere…it could have been a symbol of our ambition.

Q:

Is there a problem in using a football team as a metaphor for the development of the city? Even the most popular ones only represent a fraction of the city. You attempt to build a narrative around the development of the football team. Every other football team has this narrative. They all fail, all have that bitterness. There is an alternative sporting tradition, which is the rugby one. You write very well, and very movingly, about Albert Johanneson. But there are also black Leeds rugby players like Ces Thompson, who wrote ‘Born On The Wrong Side.’ He became a manager. And Roy Francis. Apart from Paul Ince’s little sojourn at Blackburn, there are no black football managers. Look at the city in the round, you can look at a broader tradition than just one team, or one sport.

CP:

I think ‘Born On The Wrong Side’ would support what a lot of Anthony is saying. He was a very successful and articulate black representative of sport in this city, he’s clear about the problems and difficulties. Some of the same issues…

AC:

You are quite right to point these things out…but let’s get to the nub of the matter; the three strands that Caz has mentioned – Leeds writers, Leeds United and the Jewish community – all had a desire to put themselves on the map. I am a sportswriter and I go around the world and people have heard of Leeds United. Sadly, because Leeds Rhinos are a great team and have a great history, no-one will have heard of them. Yes, you’re broader perspective would be a better biography of the city, but it’s about how Leeds is perceived by the rest of the country and the rest of the world. They perceive Keith Waterhouse and the other writers, Leeds United and, through Marks, Burton, Cussins or Ziff say, they perceive the Jewish community. My argument is that Leeds’ sense of itself is determined by how others see it. I’m afraid others don’t have much of a view about Leeds Rhinos, or the black players involved – but they know about Albert because he was the first black player to play in an FA Cup Final. And about Manny Cussins, having seen The Damned United. And Billy Liar and Alan Bennett, who is a national institution. We all have a personal myth. What other people think about you is more important than waht actually happens to you. What other people think – Dirty Leeds or the Damned United – is something we can dismiss as a southern conspiracy. But because rugby league is not known to the rest of the country, the rest of Europe, the rest of the world in the same way that Leeds United are, I would rather focus on Leeds United, because that image is refracted back into the perception Leeds people have of themselves. For example, Eddie Waring. Rugby league purists turned on him for being a sell-out, but he was a pioneer who wanted rugby league to break away from its parochialism and become a national sport. He succeeded, at what price? That’s the kind of schizophrenic tension that goes on within Leeds.

Q:

It’s the same with the Polish community. The grandchildren are drifting away and not seeing that as a focus of the community; a new group coming from Poland, but none of them have said anything about Leeds United, Leeds rugby, Yorkshire CCC. They have not entered into their psyches.

AC:

It’s a generational thing. The first generation of Jews had no interest in sport – it was about survival; the second generation wanted to belong. Sport allowed them to get involved in the city.

CP:

It’s not just about wishing to participate, its about the willingness of institutions to allow them to do so. There’s nothing to be said about Yorkshire CCC in terms of openness. It’s parochial, inward-looking, and unpleasant; there was no possibility of that pioneer generation of West Indians participating. Leeds Rugby League has been more open. Leeds United have been lazy and complacent as far as migrant communities in this city are concerned. Ridsdale attempted to do something with his community initiative; it was really Emma Stanford doing all the work. They still have a long way to go. It cuts both ways. Generationally people become more involved in the city and wish to be involved in something beyond trying to get kids educated, a roof over their heads, get a job. Sport comes way after that. But then look at how open those institutions are?

Q:

I read your book and really enjoyed it. Especially about your dad working in a Jewish cemetery. And you talk about the death of the Jewish community and how it is disappearing. Is this a good thing, a sign of acceptance? Or a bad thing?

AC:

This is the most difficult question of the night. There’s no doubt numerically it’s in decline. I feel guilty about that. I left the community. I was accused of romanticising the past as only an exile can. This is such a difficult question. It’s like the writers who leave Leeds. Every one of them, including Caz, has written about Leeds when they’ve left Leeds. We need to move away to reflect on what happened. But in the process of moving away do we not contribute to the decmise of the thing we are celebrating, or at least reflecting on?

The Jewish dilemna isn’t that different from almost any other immigrant group. Irish-Catholic, Afro-Caribbean, Asian. The second and third generations fulfill their parents fantasies of upward mobility, but do you then pay a price by losing your identity? I think the answer is yes. Which is very sad.

CP:

But only if you have a narrow, essentialist notion of identity. I think you’ve been very hard on yourself. Don’t be guilty, What are you, Woody Allen\/ Give it up. You’ve given back. Your book is a tremendous tribute to Leeds, to the Jewish community…

AC:

But will there be a Jewish community after the next generation?

CP:

That’s not your problem.

Q:

I supported Leeds United in the 70s. I got transplanted to Henley on Thames. I took Leeds with me as a symbol of my sense of injustice, of despising these softy southerners, and I had this huge scowl on my face. What you were saying about a chip on your shoulder was very real to me. Jimmy Hill would slag them off. It is a perfect metaphor for me.

AC:

When we leave Leeds, the north, we come up against a kind of hostility which has a parallel with Jewishness – anti-Leeds remarks were being made alongside anti-semitic remarks. So this chip on the shoulder was armour to protect me. It’s starts out as a positive thing. But ultimately I see it as a negative thing. In New York, Caz, is your sense of Leedsness enhanced by leaving Leeds?

CP:

You’re not going to turn this on me. I have exactly the same narrative experience of growing up in this city that you have, and that many people in this room have. My
identity, having had the privilege to grow up in this city during the Revie years, is deeply connected to Leeds United FC. And that is what is so eloquently stated in this book. It would be very hard to be a young kid, interested in football, coming of age in this city in the late 60s or 70s and not take immense pride in the internationalisation of Leeds. I went to see Leeds play Juventus in 1971 when we won the Fairs Cup. I remember on the top deck of the bus as a 13-year-old kid I saw Italian fans. I’d never met Italians. I remember beating Lyn Oslo 10-0. I remember the world coming to me through Leeds United, being educated geographically about where I was in Europe through the adventures of this team. I remember learning about Scotland through realising we had Scottish players. Part of my eduaction as a kid – of breaking out of what you call the parochialism of Fortress Leeds City – came through the magical adventure of that team. You developed a chip on your shoulder, a scowl, a strength of mind which you carry with you. So the team is deeply tied up as an adolescent, which is an incredibly impressionable part of one’s journey through life, with my development as a human being and a thinking individual.

That is what is so beautifully and eloquently captured in this book, along with the notion of what it means to be a migrant. And you were alluding to this. And to finding yourself adrift in a city. My father listened to the 1963 England-West Indies test series, wondering why the hell his son didn’t give a damn about cricket. All I was interested in was getting to Elland Road as fast as I could. Gary Sprake lived by my school. I went with a paper towel, knocked on the door, his landlord looking down at this little black kid asking ‘can Gary sign this please?’ Sprake came down and signed it. That’s your entry into the city. That gives you a way in as an immigrant. It’s a very important and poignant part of Leeds’ history. I think sport has played a huge part in the narrative of the development of this city. For all sorts of people, particularly in terms of class and mobility.

AC:

The Bowyer-Woodgate saga brought on such a great sense of shame for me. Even now, we haven’t recovered from it. I was so optimistic about the new Leeds, and the new Leeds United; I bought into the Ridsdale spiel about a multi-cultural, cosmopolitan club. For all his faults he had a vision. It felt like we had reinvented ourselves. The final hurdle was to be popular as well as successful. I want Leeds to be everyone’s second favourite team. When Eric Cantona was here we were heralded internationally, then we sold him to our biggest rivals for £1m. And they went on to dominate English and European football. For me, the Bowyer-Woodgate is a similar thing. We had an amazing team of young, homegrown talent and we messed it up big time – not just financially but in terms of how we perceive ourselves and how we are perceived by the rest of the world; the old insular image, seige mentality – even racist image – came back to haunt us. Whatever happened in that terrible moment down by The Majestyk when a young Asian student got beaten up and almost died – this veneer of multiculturalism was shattered. By the way Leeds United, the manager David O’Leary and some of the fans reacted. To the rest of country it was the same old Leeds, the same old racists, the same old Dirty Leeds.

CP:

They were right

AC:

That is the dark, sinister, unsavoury part of Leeds; the schizophrenia I was talking about. The tension between that side and the ambitious, outward-looking side hasn’t been resolved. Ten years on, Bowyer-Woodgate still resonates. On the doorstep of Elland Road we have an Asian community that, on the whole, does not support Leeds United. They were beginning to, but Bowyer-Woodgate shatterred the attempt to integrate them into LUFC. It led to alienation. The Leeds Jewish population integrated.

CP:

The answer is easy. People are interested in what your club looks like. You don’t walk into a club in the street if it doesn’t look like you should be in there. When I asked Peter Ridsdale how many in a club that employed 75, how many black people he employed who didn’t wear football boots were in the club – he said none. That’s your answer. Why would you want to be a part of that? That’s bullshit. It’s like this university; any institution has to reform itself to make itself an institution that suggests people are welcome.

Q:

It’s a false premise. I’ve got loads of Asian mates and they all support Leeds United. At Elland Road I see quite a few Asian fans.

CP:

It’s still a problem. I was at Leicester over ten years ago when Leeds started to sing ‘You’re just a town full of Pakis’. So if you’re an Asian football fan you’re still going to go, but the club did nothing. The Kop in the 70s sang: ‘I’d rather be a ****** than a Scouse.’ But I went back to stand there. But it’s not representative of the community, of what they could have…

Q:

It’s the same with any other big club

CP:

I agree, but we’re sitting in Leeds and we’re Leeds fans and we’re more concerned with Leeds. It’s a problem if you’re Jewish and you go to Arsenal and they talk about Yids. We expect better of Leeds. That’s our team. That’s the anxiety that informs this

Leeds Guide Review

http://www.leedsguide.co.uk/review/book-review/promised-land/17669

The Telegraph Sport Books Of 2010

For the year’s most successful marriage of social history and sporting drama, turn to Promised Land (Yellow Jersey, £16.99), Anthony Clavane’s enchanting evocation of his four decades as a Leeds United supporter.

Promised Land is nothing if not ambitious. Clavane knits together three different narratives: Leeds’s painful transformation from grimy manufacturing base to strong financial centre; the gradual integration of his own Jewish orthodox community; and the crazy, zigzagging trajectory of the football club itself.

It would be easy, in a book like this, to overplay the parallels. But Clavane writes translucent, simple prose, full of vivid details. Leeds United becomes a prism for the city: the “New Jerusalem” that could never quite escape the stain of its industrial past. Both insightful and humane, this is sportswriting at its very best.

Simon Briggs

The Times Books Of The Year 2010

The sports shelves this year offer several books with grand ambitions. One of those is ‘Promised Land: The Reinvention Of Leeds United’ by Anthony Clavane, in which the history teacher turned Sunday Mirror journalist weaves his own Jewish roots into a history of the most demonised of English football clubs. It is a bold approach in which Keith Waterhouse and Alan Bennett are as liable to crop up as Billy Bremner and Gary Sprake, but Clavane pulls it off with his passion for his city and its club. Just as (Carlo) Ancelotti’s memoirs give a human face to Chelsea, Clavane makes you engage with the sometimes violent, often broke club that is Leeds.

Matt Dickinson

Praise for Promised Land

“Anthony Clavane’s magnificent Promised Land is a fan’s-eye view of Leeds United over the years. Promised Land is an instant classic, standing comparison with Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch, although Clavane’s book concerns itself more with the cityscape that surrounds his beloved football club and less with the author’s own neuroses.”

Simon Briggs, Daily Telegraph

“Humane, witty and literate…Sports Book Of The Year”

The Radio 2 Book Club

“An original, passionate, thought-provoking and hugely enjoyable account of the highs and lows of Leeds United. Even if you’re not a Leeds fan, read Promised Land by Anthony Clavane. It is wonderfully written.”

Patrick Barclay, The Times

“Promised Land is fantastic. I read it in two sittings and couldn’t put it down. Clavane has delivered an absorbing, compelling and very personal history, and dissection, of Leeds, the city and the club. Brilliant.”

David Peace, author of The Damned Utd

“This superb memoir defies categorisation as the author, born into the Jewish community in Leeds in 1960, offers a history of his young self, his family, tribe, the rag trade and Leeds United. It is a tale of outcasts and their aspirations, memorably symbolised by the Don Revie era at Elland Road. Clavane brings together a wealth of detail, allied with historical and sporting judgment, to produce the football book of the year.”

Nick Pitt, Sunday Times

“Promised Land is a revelatory work not merely for Leeds fans but for those unfamiliar with the city, such is Clavane’s skill in weaving together the city’s history, Jewish heritage and sporting ambitions. A rich, complex book about football and fandom, origins and expectations, Promised Land is more than just promising; it’s absolutely brilliant”.

Simon Redfern, Independent On Sunday

“Promised Land is fantastic. It’s beautifully written, powerful and full of insight about sport and life. It is the best sports book I read in 2010. Which is difficult for me to say, as a Barnsley fan. Anthony is a Leeds fan and a Mirror journalist and this is a humane, witty and literate account of following Leeds through good years and bad, paralleling the fortunes of the city, of the Jewish community, and of Anthony’s development as a writer and a human being. And a Leeds fan! It’s in the school of Nick Hornby. The prose is beautiful. My wife, who is not a Leeds fan – or any kind of football fan – liked it, which is always the test; she was captivated by the prose, the sentences and the emotion. ‘Promised Land’ is my favourite non-fiction book of 2010.”

Ian McMillan, poet and broadcaster, choosing Promised Land as his favourite non-fiction book of the year for “The Radio 2 Book Club – Best Of 2010” on Simon Mayo’s Radio 2 drivetime show.

“For the year’s most successful marriage of social history and sporting drama, turn to Promised Land (Yellow Jersey, £16.99), Anthony Clavane’s enchanting evocation of his four decades as a Leeds United supporter. Promised Land is nothing if not ambitious. Clavane knits together three different narratives: Leeds’ painful transformation from grimy manufacturing base to strong financial centre; the gradual integration of his own Jewish orthodox community; and the crazy, zigzagging trajectory of the football club itself. It would be easy, in a book like this, to overplay the parallels. But Clavane writes translucent, simple prose, full of vivid details. Leeds United becomes a prism for the city: the “New Jerusalem” that could never quite escape the stain of its industrial past. Both insightful and humane, this is sportswriting at its very best.

“It is hard not to think of Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch as you read this marvellous cultural history of Leeds United. Among other things, it is a study of one fan’s lifelong passion. But while Hornby’s book was essentially an internal narrative, Clavane looks outwards, to the skyscrapers, shopping precincts and council flats that have transformed his native city. By the end, you understand Leeds United because you understand Leeds itself. And vice versa. Reading Promised Land is a revelatory experience, because it shows what a powerful prism sporting history can be for understanding the world around us.

Simon Briggs, The Daily Telegraph, choosing PL as Best Football History of 2010

“Clavane’s emotional tribute to Leeds and Leeds United is a compelling read. You don’t have to be a Leeds fan to find this book absolutely fascinating.”

Henry Winter, Daily Telegraph

“History tends to overlook supposedly ‘superficial’ aspects of popular culture such as football, pop music and television. In his book Promised Land, Anthony Clavane examines the way that Leeds, as a city, has reflected the wider social and cultural changes in post-war British society. In the 1970s, for example, it consciously rebranded itself as the Motorway City; the city of the future. Clavane gives a superb sense of the texture of that period: the anxiety of losing your job, of industries dying, of the crimes of the Yorkshire Ripper. And he shows, quite beautifully, how one institution – Don Revie’s Leeds United – can be a prism through which we can view many developments in society. Promised Land brilliantly marries different genres, viewing Leeds, as David Peace does in his novels, as an extended metaphor for the changes that have taken place in post-war Britain.”

Dominic Sandbrook, historian, author of State Of Emergency, White Heat and Never Had It So Good

“A thought-provoking history of Leeds told through the intertwined stories of the city, the football club and the Jewish community. A brilliant example of how football can illuminate other parts of culture and society.”

Jonathan Wilson, author of Inverting The Pyramid

“The sports shelves this year offer several books with grand ambitions. One of those is Promised Land: The Reinvention of Leeds United by Anthony Clavane, in which the history teacher turned Sunday Mirror journalist weaves his own Jewish roots into a history of the most demonised of English football clubs. It is a bold approach in which Keith Waterhouse and Alan Bennett are as liable to crop up as Billy Bremner and Gary Sprake, but Clavane pulls it off with his passion for his city and its club. Just as Ancelotti’s memoirs give a human face to Chelsea, Clavane makes you engage with the sometimes violent, often broke club that is Leeds.”

Matt Dickinson, The Times, choosing PL as one the sports books of the year.

“The book presents a compelling argument that Leeds and its United are umbilically bound: loathed beyond the borders, defensive, beautiful and brutal, with visions of greatness undermined by a wilful outsider status and crippling self-doubt. Clavane’s own odyssey takes in his background as the son of Jewish immigrants who fled the Russian pogroms. The author’s knowledge of the city’s Jewish community provides an engrossing backdrop to his examination of Leeds through the lens of racism and multiculturalism, through drama, comedy and social history. Mirroring his own love/hate relationship with the city, Clavane’s book is powered by a dynamic drama of the reactionary versus the progressive, the good versus the unjust, through Leeds’s travels from grimy industrial centre to “Knightsbridge of the north”.  Promised Land is glorious. (It) will have an appeal far beyond football.”

Dave Simpson, The Guardian

“As symbols of the hopes and disappointments of a brash and ambitious city, Clavane’s beloved “whites” pass the most vigorous tests, all of which are handled with a fine mixture of wit and pain, not to mention biting reflection. Most impressive is that, when you put down the book, you feel you know not just the story of a football team but the city it represents; its rawness and talent, its achievements and its failures and, maybe most of all, its resilience. If Clavane and his city have chips on their shoulders, here they are rather brilliantly sculpted. Clavane writes not just about the football but its impact on all sections of the city’s population, and is particularly eloquent on his own Jewish background. His concluding wish is that “Billy Liar will get on the train and the Israelites will cross over into the Promised Land and the name of Leeds United, as one of the founders once dreamed, ‘will finally appear on the rolls of the Football Association as the city which passed through fire, was cleansed and given a fair and sporting chance to rehabilitate itself’.” It’s a big hope, but then this is a surprisingly big book.

James Lawton, The Independent

“The book is a fine achievement. Broad and general yet hugely personal; socio-historical but sporty; academic but approachable; partisan but even-handed;  sensitive but unsentimental. Clavane traces the development of the city and its team in parallel and pays homage to the literature that surfaced from Leeds and its surrounds in the 50s, 60s and 70s, such as Billy Liar. Most interestingly and unexpectedly, it is also a history of the city’s Jewish community , from which he hails. Promised Land prompts the reader to evaluate his or her stereotypes, assumptions and attitudes concerning Leeds because it’s so well-written and interesting that you can’t help, if not necessarily falling in love with Leeds, then respecting and understanding them just a little more.”

Tom Dart, The Times

“Since Fever Pitch gave permission for thoughtful people to write about football, some of the best books have taken as their subject that most unloved of teams, Leeds United. Clavane, a sports reporter and Leeds fan, is ideally qualified to tell the fascinating story of the club’s rise and fall (and rise again?), but thankfully for those of us outside the Leeds family this tale is woven skillfully into a broader social history. Promised Land is an engaging and ambitious popular history which is crafted from the author’s own personal story, passions and obsessions.

“Clavane’s belief that football can bind communities together, borne out of his own Leeds Jewish experience, can be read as an antidote to contemporary division and despair.

Despite the book’s wider ambitions, Clavane is a fan – as partisan as any – telling a football story and celebrating a club. He charts Leeds United’s demise in the 1980s – when he himself pulled away from the club and the city – its resurgence in the 1990s and an astonishing fall from grace when it was on the brink of the ‘promised land’. He wants to rehabilitate the reputation of an unforgiven club. And he wants justice for Don Revie, a manager who in his estimation should stand alongside Bill Shankly, Matt Busby and, yes, Brian Clough, yet whose achievements are shamefully unacknowledged outside Leeds. It is a brave attempt: if Leeds is not loved then at least thanks to Clavane it will be better understood. I hope that those outside the Leeds tribe will pick up this original book.”

Kester Aspden, Esquire Magazine

“Clavane provides a splendidly acute, richly evocative and autobiographically laced take on familiar material. No page goes unturned without the eyebrow raising at some telling detail. Neutrals should certainly have no trouble enjoying this book.”

David Stubbs, When Saturday Comes

“This is no ordinary football book but a remarkable social and cultural history of the city of Leeds, particularly its Jewish community and its influential relationship with the football club. In a compelling narrative (the only one about Leeds United, surely, to contain the word ‘parvenu’), he makes a case for the club standing as a dictionary definition for ‘mercurial’ or ‘turbulent’. The disparate strands are woven together with skill and style.”

Phil Shaw, Backpass Magazine

“Clavane is increasingly sure-footed at placing the club at the centre of an England that is still riven by racism. Clavane, a Jew, recalls the assimilation of his ancestors but points out that religion and race were resurrected as a conduit for conflict in tough times. He is also brilliant on the disappearing of the United dream in the smoke and mirrors of dodgy corporate finance.”

Hugh McDonald, The Herald

“Clavane has an interesting angle here. In connecting the initially ghetto-ised Jewish community in the making of the city and its football team in the 20th century, he combines memoir and social history. And the chapter on Don Revie’s ‘glory years’ are fascinating beyond mere football.”

Ben East, Metro

“Thoughtful (and) readable…Promised Land excels in a re-reading of the Revie era that places Don Revie and his team alongside Keith Waterhouse’s Billy Liar, David Storey’s This Sporting Life and John Braine’s ‘Room At The Top’ as a work of art by, and about, northern man. ‘Revie’s Leeds are not often lumped together with Billy Liar, The Beatles, David Hockney, the New Wave writers, the Liverpool poets…’ writes Clavane, but he makes a persuasive argument that they, The Beaten Generation, should be.”

Square Ball Magazine

“Promised Land is wonderful. It’s very evocative…a fantastic book.”

Will Buckley on the Today show on Radio Four

“Clavane, erudite, educated, an adopted southerner, hardly ascribes to the Elland Road stereotype, yet there is an emotional intravenous drip connecting him to Yorkshire’s West Riding. A wordsmith’s ability, coupled with a history teacher’s instinct, and framed by a deep passion for all things from the city of Leeds, has resulted in an extraordinary book.”

Janine Self, Sports Journalists’ Association

“Promised Land’ is one of the best football books I’ve read for a long time. Clavane is a very talented writer. This is an original book, in that it blends two things which are both very interesting to me: Jewish life in Leeds and the way the Jewish community emerged from extreme poverty – and the emergence of Leeds United as a force in football.”

Brian Glanville

“The Jewish Fever Pitch. Clavane.takes us on a journey from his family’s flight from the pogroms in Russia to the Kop at Elland Road.”

James Brown, former editor of Loaded, GQ and Jack

“A riveting, and ultimately very moving book. A great tribute to Anthony Clavane’s family, to the city of Leeds, to the Jewish community of Leeds, to the writers of Leeds, and to LUFC. Not an easy juggling act to pull off, but he does so eloquently. I truly hope this book gets the national attention it deserves. This is a really major piece of work about the city with all its complex, frustrating, nonsense thrown into the mix.”

Caryl Phillips, author of A Distant Shore

“Promised Land is a different football book. It communicates first and foremost, in an outstanding manner, the bittersweet feeling of most fans of Leeds United – a club that has stumbled on the finish line more times than perhaps any other. But it also tells the club’s story in a fascinating and highly readable manner. One of the highlights of the book is the description of the walk from Elland Road and down to Leeds city centre after the 2009 play-off defeat against Millwall where the author, in solitude, philosophises over the club’s dramatic history and the question we all wonder about: Can Leeds United rise again?”

Morten Haugen, Peacock News, the magazine of the Leeds United Supporters Club of Scandinavia (about 3400 members)

“Promised Land’is superbly written and a great read. It features not just one but three histories, all great stories in their own right. There is wit, wisdom, a bit of weirdness here and there, and a lot of wonder. I recommend the book to anyone wanting to learn more about Leeds city, the city’s Jewish population and of course the institution that is LUFC. Promised Land entertains, educates and enlightens. My only gripe is that it’s too short, which is really a veiled compliment: I just wanted to read more.”

Leeds Leeds Leeds magazine

“Promised Land is real life, warts and all and we’ve had some bloody grim times in Leeds. It is often far from pleasant reading, but it is (like the club and the city) always fascinating. Clavane gets inside the fabric and pulls at the stitches of the football club and city. It’s a book which will make you glow with pride and cry out with knowing despair if you have any feelings for our fair city or football club.”

East Leeds Magazine

“A brilliant, enlightening read. A thrilling and compelling book.”

On Yorkshire Magazine

“Clavane’s passion and dedication to this team shine through in his personal reflections, but his journalistic experience also enables him to cut through the controversies, scandals and nonsense to give an accurate and insightful look into the past. It really is brilliant how Clavane has tied the three strands together.”

Scratching Shed magazine

“Promised Land is sensational. Go out and buy the book.”

Steve Anglesey, Mirrorfootball.co.uk

“To stand out from the crowd…requires something special.  Anthony Clavane has pulled it off with Promised Land. The title is no throwaway line.  It was inspired by a sign that once hung inside Leeds railway station bearing the words: ‘Leeds, the Promised Land delivered’ but, as the reader discovers quickly as he or she is drawn into a compelling narrative, the phrase has a particular resonance for the author. While the highs and lows experienced by Leeds supporters during the author’s lifetime hold the tale together as a central thread, Clavane has managed to relate the history of the team to the evolution of the Jewish population and the physical, social and cultural development of the city of Leeds. He does so superbly and the end result is an intimate, personal account of his own life that reveals a secret history of the club and its relationship with the Jewish community and is also an affectionate and poignant celebration of an era in the life of a northern English city that may never be repeated. Promised Land is brilliant sociological sports history.”

Jon Culley, Sports Bookshelf

“Clavane writes in the accessible– and emotional– style of a good sports journalist, (providing) statistics enough for most soccer pedants.”

Jewish Chronicle

“This passionate, absorbing account is a compelling read and one of those rare sports books that transcends its central subject and is deserving of an audience beyond football fans.”

The Leeds Guide

“Anthony Clavane is a man with a deep passion for the history of our beloved city. Every word of his book is soaked with fierce pride of his heritage. It is not a pride that eclipses the truth. He doesn’t shy away from the dark side of Leeds. Inspired by his youth, growing up in the Jewish ghettos, Clavane has developed a love/hate relationship with both the club and the city. Promised Land is not your usual historic biography of a football club. It is the story of one boy’s love affair with his city, club and religion.”

Leeds Student

“Promised Land is a fascinating account of an old town’s attempt to transform itself into a shiny, post-industrial European metropolis.”

Jewish Telegraph

“The ‘cultural political’ mode of analysis pioneered by CLR James in Beyond A Boundary and perfected by Stuart Hall and his co-workers infuses this excellent book. Promised Land is as much a cultural study of football as it is of a city and its people. Its ability to transcend the narrow disciplinary confines of literarture, history and sociology makes it the kind of book public intellectuals would love to produce. If only they could write as vividly and accessibly as Clavane. This book is rich in detail and beguiling in its eloquence. It almost made me want to become a supporter.”

Max Farrar, Emeritus Professor at Leeds Metropolitan University

“Promised Land (contains) dazzling prose…Clavane is one of our favourite writers.”

Yorkshire Post

Next Page »

• Daily Telegraph sports books of the year (2010)

  "For the year’s most successful marriage of social history and sporting drama, turn to Promised Land. Anthony Clavane’s enchanting evocation of his four decades as a Leeds United supporter. Clavane writes translucent, simple prose, full of vivid details. Leeds United becomes a prism for the city: the “New Jerusalem” that could never quite escape the stain of its industrial past. Both insightful and humane, this is sportswriting at its very best."

• James Lawton, The Independent

  "Brilliantly sculpted. Absorbing and superbly wide-ranging. Most impressive is that, when you put down the book, you feel you know not just the story of a football team but the city it represents."

• Henry Winter, Daily Telegraph

  "A well-written, emotional and thoughtful chronicle."

• Praise for Promised Land

  "Clavane, erudite, educated, an adopted southerner, hardly ascribes to the Elland Road stereotype, yet there is an emotional intravenous drip connecting him to Yorkshire’s West Riding. A wordsmith’s ability, coupled with a history teacher’s instinct, and framed by a deep passion for all things from the city of Leeds, has resulted in an extraordinary book."

  Janine Self, SJA website

• "Even if you're not a Leeds fan, read Promised Land by Anthony Clavane - wonderfully written."

  Patrick Barclay, The Times

• "One of the best football books I've read for a long time."

  Brian Glanville

• "A compelling read."

  Henry Winter, Daily Telegraph

• "A riveting, and ultimately very moving book."

  Caryl Phillips

• "Fascinating beyond mere football."

  Ben East, Metro

• "Superbly written and a great read."

  Robert Endeacott, Leeds Leeds Leeds magazine

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