Adam Hart-Davis

Adam Haslett is the author of the story collection You Are Not a Stranger Here and the novels Imagine Me Gone and Union Atlantic. He has twice been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award and his books have been translated into over thirty languages. His journalism on culture and politics has appeared in The Financial Times, Esquire, The New Yorker, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, The Nation, and The Atlantic, among others. He lives in New York City.

Adam Haslett

Adam Henson is perhaps the best-known farmer in the UK, presenting on BBC's Countryfile to millions of viewers each Sunday evening. He's also appeared on Lambing Live, Secret Britain, Coast and Inside Out. Adam also runs the award-winning Cotswold Farm Park in Gloucestershire, which welcomes family visitors all year round and is home to many rare breeds. He has a monthly column in Countryfile magazine, as well as the Cotswold Life magazine. He has written several books including the Sunday Times bestseller Like Farmer, Like Son. This is his first children's book and it is the perfect introduction to the farm.

Adam Henson

Adam Henson presents Countryfile, often from his 650-hectare farm in the Cotswolds. Having studied Agriculture at college, Adam took over Bemborough Farm from his father, Joe. The farm now grows wheat, spring barley and oilseed rape, runs a flock of 400 commercial ewes and has the UK's leading collection of rare breeds, many of which are in demand for film sets and advertisements. Cotswold Farm Park (www.cotswoldfarmpark.co.uk) offers a total countryside experience for all the family, welcoming more than 100,000 visitors each year. 
 
Adam presented Lambing Live with Kate Humble, writes for Countryfile magazine and has appeared on Radio 4's On Your Farm and Farming Today. He is the author of three previous books, Adam’s Farm: My Life on the Land, the Sunday Times bestseller, Like Farmer, Like Son and A Farmer and His Dog.

Adam Higginbotham has written for magazines including The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, Wired and Smithsonian. He is also the author of Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space, which was awarded the Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction. He lives in New York City.

Adam Higginbotham

Adam Hills is an internationally recognised comedian and host of award-winning Channel 4 show The Last Leg. His collection of stories from a life in comedy, Best Foot Forward, was a Times bestseller.

Adam Hills

Adam Howling

Adam J. Kurtz

Adam Jacot de Boinod

ADAM JOHNSON won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2013 for his second novel, the New York Times bestseller The Orphan Master’s Son (‘Excavates the very meaning of life’ New York Times). His short story 'Nirvana' won the prestigious Sunday Times/EFG Short Story Award. He is the author of acclaimed story collections, Fortune Smiles and Emporium and the novel Parasites Like Us. He teaches creative writing at Stanford University and lives with his family in San Francisco.

Adam Johnson

Adam Kay is a former doctor who has written five million books and sold seven copies. No, hang on – he’s written seven books and sold five million copies. His debut book, This is Going to Hurt, is a literary sensation: a Sunday Times number one bestseller for over a year, winning a record-breaking four National Book Awards and selling over 3 million copies. Kay adapted This is Going to Hurt as a BAFTA-winning comedy-drama series for the BBC. Adam Kay’s children’s books have been translated into 32 languages and sold over 1 million copies, making him one of the UK’s bestselling children’s authors. Kay’s Anatomy became the fastest-selling children’s general non-fiction hardback of the decade. His first picture book, Amy Gets Eaten, was published in 2023, and his first children’s novel, Dexter Procter the Ten-Year-Old Doctor, was published in September 2024.

Adam Kay

Adam studied illustration and animation, and received a BA followed by an MA from the Edinburgh College of Art. As a student he won a competition to create a short film for MOMI and Channel 4, and once his career producing animated commercials was under way, he became an illustrator as well. He has regular columns in the UK and the US.

Adam Larkum

Adam Lashinsky

Adam Macqueen

Adam Mars-Jones

Adam O'Riordan was born in Manchester in 1982, where he currently lives. In 2008 he became the youngest Poet-in-Residence at The Wordsworth Trust, the Centre for British Romanticism. His first collection In the Flesh (2010) win a Somerset Maugham Award. He is the Academic Director of the Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Adam O'Riordan

Adam Phillips, formerly Principal Child Psychotherapist at Charing Cross Hospital, London, is a practising psychoanalyst and a visiting professor in the English department at the University of York. He is the author of numerous works of psychoanalysis and literary criticism, including most recently On Giving Up, On Wanting to Change, Attention Seeking, In Writing, Unforbidden Pleasures and Missing Out. He is General Editor of the Penguin Modern Classics Freud translations, and a Fellow of The Royal Society of Literature.

Adam Phillips

Adam Rackley

Adam Richardson is the UK's top trending health and fitness coach with a rapidly growing audience across both TikTok and Instagram. Adam is passionate about removing barriers to exercise and movement, a philosophy that is key to his work as a Personal Trainer in which he strives to help his clients feel more confident, as well as more fit and healthy.

Adam Richardson

Adam Roberts is acknowledged as the senior scholar of international relations in the UK. He was Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at Oxford University 1986-2007, and President of the British Academy 2009-13 - the head of humanities in Britain. He was on the Council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, London (2002-08), a member of the UK Defence Academy Advisory Board (2003-15) and is now on the Board of Advisers of the Lieber Institute for Law and Land Warfare at the United States Military Academy, West Point.

Adam Roberts

Adam Roberts is the author of The Amateur Gourmet and Secrets of the Best Chefs, and coauthor of Give My Swiss Chards to Broadway. He started his food blog, The Amateur Gourmet, in 2004 and currently writes The Amateur Gourmet Newsletter on Substack. Roberts has also written for The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, and for film and television. He lives in Brooklyn with his husband and their dog, Winston. Food Person is his first novel.

Adam Robinson is based in the Middle East and is a regular contributor to newspapers in the Arab world and also to the British media. He is the author of numerous books on the region, including Bin Laden: Behind the Mask of the Terrorist.

Adam Robinson

Adam Ross

Adam Rutherford is an award-winning writer, broadcaster, and geneticist at University College London. His books include A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived, The Book of Humans, and the Sunday Times bestseller How to Argue with a Racist. He has written and presented numerous documentaries for BBC radio and television, including Inside Science and The Cell. Adam has also worked as a science advisor on many films, including the Oscar-winning Ex Machina (2015) and Annihilation (2018).

Adam Rutherford

Adam Smith

Adam Smyth runs the 39 Step Press, an experiment in printing, from a cold barn in Oxfordshire. He is also Professor of English Literature and the History of the Book at Balliol College, University of Oxford.

Adam Smyth

Adam Sweeting

Adam Tandy

Adam Thirlwell was born in London in 1978. The author of three previous novels, his work has been translated into thirty languages. His essays appear in the New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books, and he is an advisory editor of the Paris Review. His awards include a Somerset Maugham Award and the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; in 2018 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He has twice been selected by Granta as one of their Best of Young British Novelists.

Adam Thirlwell

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Nick Constable

Remember Sergio Aguero's late goal to win the title for Man City? Or, best of all, Geoff Hurst's hat-trick wining the World Cup for England in 1966? 
 
Over half a century, Match of the Day has witnessed some of the greatest moments in football history, week in, week out. From the big shorts and brown leather balls of the Stanley Matthews era, through the classic tussles of the old First Division, right up to the glamour of the globe-spanning game that we know today, football has undergone an incredible journey - and now, in this milestone 50th year, Match of the Day celebrates the very best of the drama and the heartache. 
 
With evocative memorabilia and photography throughout, relive the story of the beautiful game, season-by-season. Featuring favourite Match of the Day memories from top players and long-standing members of the MOTD team, this is the ultimate collection of football memories for any fan.

Match of the Day: 50 Years of Football

Ebury Press

‘Please don’t call me arrogant, but I’m European champion and I think I’m a special one.’ 
 
 Widely known for his strong personality, sharp dress sense, and eccentric comments at press conferences, there is only one José Mourinho. Regarded as many by the world’s best manager and one of the greatest of all time, he achieved huge success whilst at Benfica, Uniao de Leiria, Porto, Chelsea, Internazionale and Real Madrid. Never one to doubt his own abilities, the charismatic and controversial manager has dominated headlines with his many clashes with the press and run-ins with the football authorities. 
 
 Silver-tongued and passionate, this compendium of quotes from the ‘special one’ includes the very best of Mourinho on football: his erudite comments, bizarre philosophies, confident expressions of unwavering self-belief and his love of the beautiful game. 
 
 ‘Look, I'm a coach, I'm not Harry Potter. He is magical, but in reality there is no magic. Magic is fiction and football is real.’ 
 A warning to Real Madrid fans, 2010 
 
 ‘Look at my haircut. I am ready for the war.’ 
 At the launch of a new shirt deal between Chelsea and Adidas. The event also became a chance to unveil his new, short-trimmed haircut. 
 
 ‘I think they should get George Clooney to play me. He's a fantastic actor and my wife thinks he would be ideal.’ 
 Contemplating a film of his life

The José Mourinho Quote Book

Jim Craig

Pat Woods

Celtic Football Club’s story is laced with drama and excitement, featuring a host of colourful individuals and a social history matched by few, if any, football clubs. 
 
In Celtic: Pride and Passion, Lisbon Lion Jim Craig and Pat Woods, a historian of the club, take a fresh look at several lesser-known episodes in Celtic’s history, including: the fascinating link between Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and a dramatic Ne’erday match at Celtic Park; the unforgettable night the ‘playboy of the Eastern world’ lit up Parkhead with a performance that helped to sow the seeds for a revolution at the club; the remarkable story of a trophy that was such a source of friction that the club kept it locked in a safe; and the pivotal year in which the rivalry between Celtic and Rangers took on a darker hue. They also recount the revealing story, told through the eyes of the European press, of how Celtic captivated a continent in the annus mirabilis of 1967. 
 
Celtic: Pride and Passion is a book that no discerning fan of Celtic Football Club will want to be without.

Celtic: Pride and Passion

Simon Hughes

During the 1980s, Liverpool Football Club dominated English football, winning six league titles, two European Cups, two FA Cups and four League Cups. In Red Machine, Simon Hughes interviews some of the most colourful characters to have played for the club during that period. The resulting interviews, set against the historical backdrop of both the club and the city, provide a vivid portrait of life at Liverpool during an era when the club’s unparalleled on-pitch success often went hand in hand with a boozy social scene fraught with rows, fights and wind-ups. 
 
The players featured here include John Barnes, Bruce Grobbelaar, Howard Gayle, Michael Robinson, John Wark, Kevin Sheedy, Nigel Spackman, Steve Staunton, David Hodgson and Craig Johnston, as well as first-team coach Ronnie Moran. Their candid, ribald and sometimes scathing recollections provide an antidote to the media-coached, on-message interviews given by today’s players and combine to offer a unique insight to this exciting time in the club’s history.

Red Machine

Liverpool FC in the '80s: The Players' Stories

Phil Shaw

The greatest football quotations collection ever, now in its ninth edition. 
This compilation includes quotes from everyone – Shakespeare to Suarez, Camus to Cantona, Busby to Beckham – who has made an apt, pithy or comical comment about football. And not just footballers and managers either – fans, pundits, groundsmen, directors and wives all get to have their say too. Every subject is covered, from tactical debates to changing lifestyles, to produce a sometimes hilarious and always thought-provoking commentary on the game. 
 
‘My players are always the best players in the world, even if they aren’t’ - José Mourinho 
 
‘He was a quiet man, Eric Cantona, but he was a man of few words’ - David Beckham 
 
‘Sometimes when you aim for the stars you hit the moon’ - Ian Holloway

The Book of Football Quotations

Sid Lowe

‘A history of modern Spain told through one of world football's most intense rivalries’ Independent 
 
‘Sports Book of the Year’ Sunday Times 
 
It’s Messi vs Ronaldo, it’s Catalonia vs Castilla. It’s the nation against the state, freedom fighters vs Franco’s fascists. It’s majestic goals and mesmerising skills, red cards and bench brawls. It’s the best two teams on the planet going face to face and toe to toe. 
 
It’s more than a game. It’s a war. 
It’s Barcelona vs Real Madrid. 
 
 Only, it’s not that simple. From the wounds left by the civil war to the teams’ recent global domination, historian and expert on Spanish football, Sid Lowe lifts the lid on sport’s greatest rivalry. Lowe has spoken to the biggest names and the forgotten heroes who defined their clubs. Men like Alfredo Di Stéfano and Johan Cruyff as well as the only survivor of the most politically charged game in history, the Barcelona striker who knocked Madrid out of the European Cup for the first time ever, and the president who celebrated his club’s defining moment by taking a midnight dip in the Thames. 
 
 By exploring the history, politics, culture, economics and language, while never forgetting the drama on the pitch, Lowe demonstrates the symbiotic nature of the relationship between these two football giants. In doing so he reveals the human story behind this explosive rivalry.

Fear and Loathing in La Liga

Barcelona vs Real Madrid

The Secret WAG

Money, cars, homes, holidays, parties and all the shoes you've ever dreamed of. The life of a footballer's wife or girlfriend must be as glamorous and exciting as her other half, right? But behind the closed doors of the WAG's world, there are all the pressures as well as pleasures of success. So what is it really like? 
 
The Secret WAG lays bare the reality of existence under the celebrity spotlight. It is about fashion and fame, sex and scandal, but, like the bestselling Secret Footballer books, is also an honest appraisal of life on and off the field of play which will change your preconceptions about footballers and their partners. It is sassy, outspoken, funny and above all, written from the heart. Meet The Secret WAG.

I Am The Secret WAG

The true story of my life as an England footballer's wife

Michael Calvin

Winner of The Times British Sports Book Award 2014. 
 
A fascinating insight into the enclosed world of football scouts in the UK 
 
A teenaged boy plays football in a suburban park. His name is Raheem Sterling. The call is made: “Get down here quick. This is something special”. 
 
Another boy is 8, going on 28. His name is Jack Wilshere. The referee, an Arsenal scout, spirits him away from Luton Town. 
 
A young goalkeeper struggles on loan at Cheltenham Town in League Two. His name is Jack Butland. Within months he will be playing for England. 
 
Welcome to football’s hidden tribe. Scouts are everywhere yet nowhere, faceless and nameless, despite making the informed decisions worth millions. Award-winning sportswriter Michael Calvin opens up their hidden world, examining their disconnected lifestyles, petty betrayals and unconsidered professionalism of men who spend long, lonely hours on the road.

The Nowhere Men

Duncan Hamilton

The two time winner of the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award on George Best, considered the greatest footballer of our time. 
 
No other imposed himself so completely on to the romantic imagination. No other was so emblematic of the era during which he flourished. And no other will ever be as memorable as George Best. 
 
On the field Best's skills were sublime and almost other-worldly. Off it, he had a magnetic appeal. He was treated like a pop icon and a pin-up; a fashion-model and a sex-symbol. Every man envied him and every woman adored him. 
 
To mark the 50th anniversary of his debut for Manchester United, Duncan Hamilton examines Best's crowded life and premature death. But most importantly, Hamilton presents Best at his glorious peak - the precocious goals, the labyrinthine runs, the poise and balletic balance and the body swerves. 
 
This is George Best: footballing immortal.

Immortal

Henrik Brandão Jönsson

In Brazil nothing is more important than football. 
 
If England is the birthplace of football then Brazil – the five-time World Cup winners and home of Pelé, Romário, Ronaldo, Neymar and the rest – is the heart and soul of the game. 
 
Jogo Bonito – meaning ‘the beautiful game’ – takes you on a journey through the Wild West of Brazilian football. On the way we meet an eclectic cast of characters, such as Mario Zagallo, the four-time World Cup winner; the long, lost son of Garrincha; Brazil’s best-loved bad boy player turned politician, Romário; and many more. We take a trip to an away game with the country’s most violent hooligans, visit the home of the world’s largest amateur football tournament and enjoy a boozy dinner with South America’s most famous commentator – he of ‘goooooooool’ fame. 
 
Jogo Bonito is a history, a travelogue and a gonzo-style report into a country which has the sixth biggest economy in the world and yet questionable records on education, healthcare and corruption. The result is a book that not only tells the story of Brazilian football, but also of today’s Brazil.

Jogo Bonito

Pele, Neymar and Brazil’s Beautiful Game

James Bannon

'Of course I'm a f**king hooligan, you pr**k. I am a hooligan...there I've said it...I'm a hooligan. And, do you know why? Because that's my f**king job.' 
 
In 1995, a film called I.D., about an ambitious young copper who was sent undercover to track down the ‘generals’ of a football hooligan gang, achieved cult status for its sheer brutality and unsettling insight into the dark and often bloody side of the so-called beautiful game. 
 
The film was so shocking it was hard to believe the mindless events that took place could ever happen in the real world. Well, believe it now... 
 
Almost twenty years on, the man behind the film has explosively revealed that the script was largely a true story. That man, James Bannon, was the ambitious undercover cop. The football club was Millwall F.C. and the gang that he infiltrated was The Bushwackers, among the most brutal and fearless in English football. 
 
In Running with the Firm, Bannon shares his intense and dangerous journey into the underworld of football hooliganism where sickening levels of violence prevail over anything else. He introduces you to the hardest thugs from football’s most notorious gangs, tells all about the secret and almost comical police operations that were meant to bring them down, and, how once you’re on the inside, getting out from the mob proves to be the biggest mission of all. 
 
A disturbing but compelling read, this is the book that proves fact really is stranger than fiction.

Running with the Firm

Chris Anderson

David Sally

Football has always been a numbers game: 4-4-2, the big number 9 and 3 points for a win. But what if up until now we've been focusing on the wrong numbers? What if the numbers that really matter, the ones that hold the key to winning matches, are actually 2.66, 53.4, 50/50, and 0 > 1? What if managers only make a 15% difference? What if Chelsea should have bought Darren Bent? 
 
In this incisive, myth-busting book, Chris Anderson, former goalkeeper turned football statistics guru, and David Sally, former baseball pitcher turned behavioural economist, show that every shred of knowledge we can gather can help us to love football and understand it even more. You'll discover why stopping a goal is more valuable than scoring one, why corners should be taken short, and why it is better to improve your worst player than to buy a superstar. 
 
You'll never play, or watch, a game of football in quite the same way again.

The Numbers Game

Why Everything You Know About Football is Wrong

Harry Redknapp

The Sunday Times no.1 bestselling memoir from Harry Redknapp 
 
‘From kicking a ball as a kid under the street lamps of Poplar and standing on Highbury's North Bank with my dad, to my first game at West Ham, I was born head over heels in love with football. It saved me, and 50 years on that hasn't changed one bit - I'd be lost without it…’ 
 
Harry is the manager who has seen it all - from a dismal 70s Portakabin at Oxford City and training pitches with trees in the middle to the unbeatable highs of the Premiership, lifting the FA Cup and taking on Real Madrid in the Champions League. With his much loved, no-nonsense delivery, Harry brings us a story filled with passion and humour that takes you right inside every drama of his career. 
 
Harry finally tells the full story of all the controversial ups and downs - the pain and heartache of his court case, the England job, his love for Bobby Moore, his adventures at Portsmouth with Milan Mandaric, the Southampton debacle, Tottenham and Daniel Levy, and not forgetting his years at West Ham or the challenges at his current club QPR. 
 
It’s the epic journey of one of the great managers and, along the way, the story of the British game itself over the last five decades. In an era now dominated by foreign coaches Harry is the last of an old-fashioned breed of English football man - one who has managed to move with the times and always come out fighting.

Always Managing

My Autobiography

Ronan O'Gara

Ronan O'Gara has been at the heart of Munster and Irish rugby for the past fifteen years. Now, as he comes to the end of a glittering playing career, it is time for him to reflect on those many successes and occasional failures with the straight-talking attitude that has become his trademark. Never one to shy away from the truth, the result is Ronan O'Gara: Unguarded. 
 
Packed full of anecdotes and analysis of the teammates O'Gara has been proud to share the shirt with, and of the coaches he has played under - often in controversial circumstances - this is the definitive record of an era when Munster rose to triumph in Europe, and Ireland to win the Grand Slam, before crashing down to earth again. It is simply the must-have rugby book of the year.

Ronan O'Gara: Unguarded

David Goldblatt

No nation has so closely aligned its national identity with playing and watching football as Brazil. 
 
Football is regarded as a thing of joy, its yellow shirts a delightful amalgam of sport and art, entwined with its cultures of music and religion. This is true, but there is another side to the story too. Brazil may now be the sixth largest economy in the world but the corruption of its football authorities is characteristic of its society as a whole. 
 
To write the history of Brazilian football is to write the history of Brazil itself. This is the whole story - the players, the fans, the politicians, the passion - from the arrival of football in the country in 1894 just after the last Emperor had been deposed to the social unrest and riots at the Confederations Cup in 2013.

Futebol Nation

A Footballing History of Brazil

Jon Henderson

‘Stanley Matthews taught us the way football should be played’ Pelé 
 
'I couldn't believe he was just a man. He was the best player in the world' Bobby Charlton 
 
'He told me that he used to play for just twenty pounds a week. Today he would be worth all the money in the Bank of England' Gianfranco Zola 
 
Stanley Matthews is one of the most famous footballers ever to play the beautiful game. Nicknamed ‘The Wizard of Dribble’ for his deadly skills, he made fools of defenders around the world. He played 84 matches for England in a career that spanned an extraordinary 33 years and such was his popularity that attendance for his club teams, Stoke City and Blackpool, more than doubled when he played. He was a global superstar decades before Beckham, Ronaldo or Messi, yet what do we really know about this legendary man? 
 
This first full and objective biography looks beyond the public face of the ‘first gentleman of soccer’ to explore a life not without controversy. This was a player who clashed with his managers, who felt undervalued in the age of the maximum wage – leading to a charge of blackmarketeering – and who was criticised for his showmanship and perceived lack of team spirit. There were private dramas too – an unhappy first marriage that produced two beloved children, and a second, to the love of his life, a Czech with a dark secret even Matthews never knew and which acclaimed biographer Jon Henderson reveals for the first time. 
 
Recreating the magic on the pitch and analyzing the key moments that made Matthews great, this is a meticulously researched story of a national hero and a fascinating insight into English football in the 20th century.

The Wizard

The Life of Stanley Matthews

David Tossell

Tommy ‘The Doc’ Docherty was a combative Scotland international wing-half who became a brilliant but erratic manager. His 1960s Chelsea team was a glorious reflection of his colourful personality, and a decade later he reinvented his relegated Manchester United side as a vibrant attacking force. 
 
He was also, however, a hostage to his own decision-making, costing Chelsea a shot at the First Division title when he banned eight players for breaking their curfew. Most famously, he was fired by United after FA Cup glory because he’d fallen in love with the physiotherapist’s wife. 
 
He was a much-travelled manager, and ‘I’ve had more clubs than Jack Nicklaus’ was among the well-worn one-liners that created the image of ‘The Doc’ as football’s stand-up comedian. But in Tommy Doc, David Tossell looks beyond the wisecracks, interviewing Docherty himself, as well as former players and colleagues, to examine a remarkable career and reveal the personal heartaches behind the laughter.

Tommy Doc

The Controversial and Colourful Life of One of Football's Most Dominant Personalities

How well do you know your football? You follow your team week in, week out, share in the agony of defeat, the pure joy of a solid win, but do you really know what's going on on the pitch? 
 
Match of the Day Quiz Book will settle thousands of arguments up and down the country - and challenge football know-it-alls to finally put their money where their mouth is. Quizzes range from the classic era right up to the modern game, taking in the best players, most successful teams, highest-scoring matches, most brutal derbies and many more besides. 
 
With 3,000 brand-new questions from the MOTD team, this is the ultimate test for any football fan.

Match of the Day Quiz Book

Nick Hornby

After the phenomenal success of Fever Pitch, Nick Hornby tried to avoid writing about football, for fear that he'd be writing about it forever. But occasionally over the years he's found it impossible to turn down a particularly enticing assignment or, in the case of the 2012-13 Premier League, just unable to resist writing about that most spectacular of seasons. 
 
Fortunately for those who love great writing about football, all these fugitive pieces are collected in Fan Mail. You can follow the fortunes, as Hornby did, of a hopelessly out-of-their-depth Cambridge United in the old Second Division, discover why Perry Groves was an unlikely hero among Arsenal fans, enjoy Hornby trying to explain the World Cup to Americans, and share with him the pain of watching our national team.

Fan Mail

Twenty Years of Writing about Football

Kelly Smith

All Kelly Smith ever wanted to be was a footballer. Blessed with brilliant talent which she honed with hours of practice, it was soon clear to all who saw her that Kelly was the best women’s footballer that this country had ever produced. Yet for this shy girl from Watford, it would be a long and difficult journey to the pinnacle of the world game, and one which would involve the hardest of challenges. 
 
After starting drinking to mask her loneliness thousands of miles from home in the United States, a series of career-threatening injuries led to severe depression and a battle with alcoholism. But with the fighting spirit that was so essential on her path to be Britain’s first women’s professional player, Kelly bounced back to inspire Arsenal to countless trophies and become England’s record goalscorer. 
 
Footballer: My Story is the inspirational tale of a woman with a drive to succeed. It is the unique inside story of a star in a sport enjoyed by millions yet often not granted the recognition it deserves. And as she nears the end of a glittering playing career, it is the story of how Kelly Smith became what she always wanted to be. A professional footballer, in a professional league.

Footballer: My Story

Dave Simpson

When the Leeds United players celebrated winning the championship in April 1992, they had no idea how momentous the occasion was. Manchester United, losers at Liverpool that Sunday afternoon, had now gone 25 years without winning the league. Howard Wilkinson's side, promoted just two seasons ago, could bring back the glory days to Leeds. But Wilkinson would prove to be the last English manager to win the league. In 1992, football changed beyond all recognition. 
 
The Last Champions explores the roots of that success and the amazing cast of characters who came together to fashion the triumph. As in his acclaimed book The Fallen, Dave Simpson's quest to catch up with the protagonists of the era, from the visionary Sergeant Wilko, top scorer Lee Chapman and unsung heroes like Mike Whitlow and Carl Shutt (not forgetting Eric Cantona), sees him unearth some extraordinary untold stories. 
 
And he finds that The Last Champions were also the last ordinary people to win the league, before the Premier League saw skyrocketing wages, billionaire foreign owners and the dictates of television taking the game away from the fans. It is the brilliantly told story of the end of an era.

The Last Champions

Leeds United and the Year that Football Changed Forever

Alex Ferguson

Alex Ferguson, once king of Scottish football, gave up the easy life in Aberdeen to follow in the famous footsteps of Sir Matt Busby. Others had flickered and then faded in the shadow cast by the legendary Busby but Ferguson couldn’t resist the call. ‘Football is a strange obsession. Winning is a drug and when I got the invitation to manage Manchester United I simply could not resist,’ he says. For nearly six years he has chased the end of the rainbow and spent millions of pounds to bring the coveted championship to Old Trafford for the first time in 25 years. Now he feels it is time to tell the inside story of the best-supported club in Britain and his struggle to fulfil the title dream of thousands of supporters. 
 
He found the famous club in disarray and he admits he came close to the sack himself. ‘No manager is prepared for the job at Old Trafford. The legend is huge. It’s different from any other club with its traditions and expectations. It took me three or four years to understand the particular politics and demands. Only through success can a manager get control of his destiny.’ 
 
Ferguson fought his battles and won the trophies which slowly but surely see him now established as a manager who has laid the old ghosts to rest and created a new vision. Winning the FA cup in 1990 bought him valuable time, and success in the European Cup-Winners’ Cup, beating Barcelona in a memorable final in Rotterdam, gave him the right platform for the most convincing championship challenge since the days of Busby. 
 
After seven years at Aberdeen, Ferguson wrote A Light in the North, an account of how he broke the Glasgow stranglehold on Scottish football. Now comes the sequel of how he conquered English football at the helm of their greatest club.

6 Years at United

Widely hailed as Scotland’s most successful football manager since Jock Stein, Alex Ferguson’s achievements with Aberdeen are unparalleled, creating and consolidating a new force in British and European football. Since joining the Dons in 1978, the ambitious, hard-driving and controversial ‘Fergie’ has seen his side capture eight major trophies – The European Cup-Winners’ Cup, European Super Cup, three Scottish Premier League titles and three Scottish Cups. 
 
 In A Light in the North, Alex Ferguson tells for the first time the story the fans have been waiting for.

A Light in the North

'Without football, we were strangers under a shared roof. With it, we were father and son.’ 
 
Inspired by his father’s devotion to Newcastle United and the heroes of yesteryear, Duncan Hamilton brings to life a bygone age telling the story of British football from the hardscrabble 1940s and the ‘never-had-it-so-good’ ’50s right through to the dowdy First Division of the ’70s and ’80s, and today’s slick Premiership. Hamilton recalls some of football’s most sublime players, managers and characters, from Bill Shankly and Jackie Milburn to George Best and Lionel Messi. 
 
But at the heart of The Footballer Who could Fly is Hamilton’s relationship with his own father. Here he tells how football became the only real connection between two people who, apart from their love of the beautiful game, were wholly different from one another.

The Footballer Who Could Fly

Simon Jordan

The ultimate gift for every football fan. Ever dreamed of owning your boyhood football club? Be careful what you wish for... 
 
Simon Jordan grew up a stone's throw from Crystal Palace Football Club. As a boy he used to break into the Palace ground for a kick-about on the hallowed turf. On leaving school he entered the mobile phone business. By the age of thirty-two, he'd built a company from nothing, sold it for £75 million and bought his childhood club. By the age of forty-two Palace was in administration and Jordan had lost nigh on everything. 
 
Be Careful What You Wish For lifts the lid on the owner's story and reveals for the first time how the national game really works. Jordan spares no one, least of all himself, as he takes us inside a world where hopes and aspirations sit alongside greed, self-interest, overpriced players, dodgy transfers and top-level incompetence. He doesn't hold back. 
 
Breathtakingly honest, highly controversial, humorous and full of jaw-dropping anecdotes, this is far more than a football book. It is a social commentary on the culture of great wealth and ambition; a Shakespearean tragedy that exposes the dark side of chasing a dream. 
 
‘If you are a football fan and have not read this book, you are missing out’ John Inverdale 
 
‘One hell of a read’ Sport Magazine 
 
'One of the best football books you will ever read' Birmingham Post

Be Careful What You Wish For

Pete May

West Ham are back in the Premiership and, to celebrate, Pete May reflects on a lifetime of supporting the Irons. It's all here in Hammers in the Heart, from a full account of West Ham's triumph against Preston in the Coca-Cola Championship play-off final at Cardiff on 30 May 2005 to his early recollections of Bobby Moore, high-leg DM boots in the North Bank, Billy Bonds' pirate chic, obscene humour in the Chicken Run, Trevor Brooking's sideburns, the FA Cup triumphs of 1975 and 1980, promotions, relegations and sides invariably 'down to the bare bones'. 
 
 With the dark humour necessary to be a Hammers fan, Pete May recalls Frank McAvennie's Neighbours mullet; Paolo Di Canio's walk-off against Bradford; 'Two Bob' Florin Raducioiu, who preferred shopping in Harvey Nichols to playing for West Ham; Iain Dowie's legendary own goal at Stockport; homeboy Joey Beauchamp; John Hartson attempting to kick off Eyal Berkovic's head in training; beating Bury 10-0 and signing their centre-half; chants of 'We want a new back four!' and relegation with the most talented side ever to go down; and, of course, the sublime skills of Brooking, Devonshire and Di Canio. 
 
 You'll laugh, you'll wince, you'll probably need a cup of Rosie Lea in Ken's Café after reading Hammers in the Heart, an epic tale of dreams that didn't always fade and die.

Hammers in the Heart

A Lifetime of Supporting West Ham

Ian Rush

Ian Rush is one of the greatest goal scorers of all time. This will be his full and long-awaited autobiography and as such its publication this autumn will be a key event in sports publishing. In it 'Rushie', one of Liverpool's most revered and long-standing players, reveals in depth the trials and triumphs of his career, playing under such great Liverpool managers as Shankly, Paisley, Fagan, Dalglish and Evans; and his thoughts and feelings about fellow players John Barnes, Jamie Redknapp and Robbie Fowler. Aside from Liverpool, Rush takes a frank look at his time playing for home country Wales, where he is the record goal scorer. It will also deal with his views on the game and where it is heading, as well as his own future after playing in the FA Cup Final when he leaves Liverpool at the end of the 1996 season.

Ian Rush - An Autobiography With Ken Gorman

Jack Milburn

Written by his own son, Jackie Milburn: A Man of Two Halves gives an unprecedented insight into the life and career of the legendary Newcastle United forward. To this day, 'Wor Jackie' remains the Magpies' top goalscorer, having notched up 238 goals in 492 appearances in the black-and-white shirt throughout the 1940s and '50s. Milburn also won the FA Cup with Newcastle three times in five years. 
 
Jackie Milburn delves beneath the surface glory to reveal how, in spite of his remarkable success as a player, Milburn was constantly tortured by his lack of self-belief. It details his days across the Irish Sea after becoming player/coach at Protestant Linfield FC and explains why he felt the need to move on after receiving menacing threats directed at his family. It reveals how, as newly appointed manager of Ipswich Town, he had a totally unexpected falling out with the departing England supremo, Alf Ramsey. We also learn how the pressures of work took their toll on Milburn and how he spent his post-football days working in a scrapyard, before being rescued by the world of sports journalism. 
 
Later in life, many honours continued to be bestowed upon Milburn, and when he died in 1988 huge crowds lined the streets for his funeral parade. 
 
Few people had a bad word to say about Jackie Milburn, and this candid biography, with contributions from Sir Bobby Robson and Alan Shearer, expertly demonstrates why he is still held in high esteem half a century after the peak of his career and 16 years after his death.

Jackie Milburn

A Man of Two Halves

Harold Davis

Paul Smith

As Harold Davis fell under heavy machine-gun fire, his body riddled with bullet wounds and life seemingly slipping away from him, he could not have realised that he was one of the Korean War’s more fortunate soldiers. American medics sprang into action and, against all odds, saved the plucky young Scot, a man who proved tougher than the bullets the brutal enemy showered him with. 
 
Unlike tens of thousands of those who fought in Korea in the 1950s, he lived to tell the tale of his horrific experiences on the front line. Now, for the first time, the Black Watch hero shares his vivid and harrowing memories. 
 
A man of tremendous grit and determination, Davis was pieced back together during almost two years in hospital. He defied doctors to return to his pre-war career as a professional footballer, building a reputation as one of Scotland’s most feared and revered defenders at Rangers FC.

Tougher Than Bullets

The Heroic Tale of a Black Watch Survivor of the Korean War

Alex Gordon

Celtic strode majestically into the history books in 1967 as the first British club to conquer Europe, and the iconic photograph of captain Billy McNeill holding aloft the glittering European Cup in the Lisbon sunshine is the defining image of that footballing era. Yet at the start of the decade, Celtic were a team plagued by defeats and in disarray both on and off the field. What brought about their remarkable transformation? 
 
In Celtic: The Awakening, Alex Gordon enters uncharted territory to investigate the story of Celtic in the 1960s, an extraordinary decade in the club's roller-coaster 125-year history. Players of the era, good, bad and indifferent, are interviewed in depth in an attempt to unravel one of football’s greatest mysteries. 
 
Sweeping through the ’60s and beyond, Celtic: The Awakening details the previously untold story of how a proud club rose from grief to glory, from dismay to delight.

Celtic: The Awakening

From East End Misfits to European Masters

Black Heart Blue

Black Lace Book Of Women Sexual Fantasies

Black Star Series

Blacklist

Set inside Blandings Castle, this comedy series follows Lord Emsworth and his pig Empress as they meet with his dysfunctional family and friends, and the havoc that follows.

Blandings

Blandings Castle

Blood City Rollers

Bloodlines

Blossom Street

Blue Ant

Bluey

Bodyguard

Bodyguard Series

Bollocks to Alton Towers

Book of Dust Series

Borderlands

Born Wicked

Boudica: the last defender of the Celtic culture; the only woman openly to have led her warriors into battle; the only British warrior to have stood against the might of Imperial Rome - and triumphed. 
 
This is her story.

Boudica

Boy Soldier

Brain Chemicals

Brave Bunnies

Bridge

Bridget Jones's Diary

Brief Encounters

Bright Young Things

Brotherband

Arthur Bryant and John May are Golden Age detectives living in the modern world. Together they head up the Peculiar Crimes Unit, ready to solve any of the weird and wonderful crimes that fall across their desks.

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