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
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