On Penalties

'Extremely entertaining and fearlessly erudite' - Evening Standard

Andrew Anthony is a feature writer and investigative journalist. He has written for the Observer since 1993, and for the Guardian since 1990. He has also written for Vogue and the Daily Telegraph. His features cover a wide range of subjects: politics, crime, sport, literature, TV and popular culture. He was nominated for Feature Writer of the Year in 2000 and Sports Writer of the Year in 2003.

'Score and few will remember; miss and no one will forget' 
 
Talking to some of the game's most successful players and managers, the question the book seeks to address is simple: can England overcome their fear of the penalty? 
 
The penalty shoot-out is the greatest set piece of sporting drama ever conceived. 
 
Cruel, arbitrary, tortuous and unfair, it has also presented the England football team with a new and infinitely more punishing manner in which to lose. Three times in the past decade the nation has sat on the edge of its collective sofa and watched the seemingly inevitable unfold as Stuart Pearce, Chris Waddle, Gareth Southgate, Paul Ince and David Batty have selected the wrong shots in the lottery of international championship shoot-outs. 
 
Except it's not a lottery. There is an art to scoring penalties, which calls upon a unique combination of physical prowess and psychological strength. In the corridor of truth that leads from the penalty spot to the goal-line, a succession of English footballers have had to confront not only the opposing goalkeeper but the hopes and dreams of fans and fellow countrymen and, of course, themselves. 
 
'A tour de force of narrative journalism' Observer

Andrew Anthony

How a guilty liberal lost his innocence

In 2001 Andrew Anthony occupied a comfortable position within the liberal left media. A successful Observer and Guardian journalist, he believed he was on the right side of the argument - the left side. But after the events of 11 September, he noticed that many colleagues and friends seemed determined to understand the perpetrator rather than support the victim. 
 
America, in their view, had it coming. In rejecting that analysis, Anthony set out on the painful process of unpicking the prejudices that had come to shape progressive, liberal and wider public opinion. 
 
The Fallout is a polemical memoir, an account of Anthony's political education in Thatcher's Britain and his stark mid-life reassessment. It's a book about crime and violence, liberty and society, principles and practice, and about vital questions that no longer match their received answers.

Andrew Anthony

Books by Andrew Anthony

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