Britain's Best Football Grounds from the Air


Book Description

Takes you on a tour above the UK's leading football stadiums. From the Wembley to the magnificent Villa Park in Birmingham and the Riverside Stadium in Middlesbrough, this title features photographs that reveal Britain's finest grounds from above.




The Game of Our Lives


Book Description

The Game of Our Lives is a masterly portrait of soccer and contemporary Britain. Soccer in the United Kingdom has evolved from a jaded, working-class tradition to a sport at the heart of popular culture, from an economic mess to a booming entertainment industry that has conquered the world. The changes in the game, David Goldblatt shows, uncannily mirror the evolution of British society. In the 1980s, soccer was described as a slum game played by slum people in slum stadiums. Such was the transformation over the following twenty-five years that novelists, politicians, poets, and bankers were all declaring their footballing loyalties. At one point, the Palace let it be known that the queen -- like her mother, Prince Harry, the chief rabbi, and the archbishop of Canterbury -- was an Arsenal fan. Soccer permeated the national life like little else, an atavistic survivor decked out in New Britain flash, a social democratic game in a cutthroat, profit-driven world. From the goals, to the players, to the managers, to the money, Goldblatt describes how the English Premier League (EPL) was forged in Margaret Thatcher's Britain by an alliance of the big clubs -- Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United, Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur -- the Football Association, and Rupert Murdoch's Sky TV. Goldblatt argues that no social phenomenon traces the momentous economic, social, and political changes of post-Thatcherite Britain in a more illuminating manner than soccer, and The Game of Our Lives provides the definitive social history of the EPL -- the most popular soccer league in the world.




How Football Began


Book Description

This ambitious and fascinating history considers why, in the space of sixty years between 1850 and 1910, football grew from a marginal and unorganised activity to become the dominant winter entertainment for millions of people around the world. The book explores how the world’s football codes - soccer, rugby league, rugby union, American, Australian, Canadian and Gaelic - developed as part of the commercialised leisure industry in the nineteenth century. Football, however and wherever it was played, was a product of the second industrial revolution, the rise of the mass media, and the spirit of the age of the masses. Important reading for students of sports studies, history, sociology, development and management, this book is also a valuable resource for scholars and academics involved in the study of football in all its forms, as well as an engrossing read for anyone interested in the early history of football.




365


Book Description

Have you ever wondered where the world's most breathtaking, historic, or important soccer grounds can be found? 365: The World's Greatest Football Grounds offers a bucket list of 365 of the most dazzling and distinctive grounds on the planet, spread across five continents. The book features a vast array of spectacular photos showcasing ancient stadiums, famous soccer temples, grounds with stunning architecture, and others set against mind-blowing backdrops. From Buenos Aires' fabulous La Bombonera (a microcosm of Argentine life) to Fulham's homely Craven Cottage (with its wooden stand dating from 1905), to Olympiastadion Berlin (built for Hitler's Olympics in 1936) to stadia built next to churches, castles, mountains, lakes, oceans, and idyllic countryside, 365 leaves no stone unturned in its quest to bring you the world's most remarkable grounds. Part guide, part love letter to the individual histories and cultures that comprise world soccer, 365 is sure to leave you planning a future pilgrimage.




Derelict London: All New Edition


Book Description

______________________________ The huge word-of-mouth bestseller – completely updated for 2019 THE LONDON THAT TOURISTS DON’T SEE Look beyond Big Ben and past the skyscrapers of the Square Mile, and you will find another London. This is the land of long-forgotten tube stations, burnt-out mansions and gently decaying factories. Welcome to DERELICT LONDON: a realm whose secrets are all around us, visible to anyone who cares to look . . . Paul Talling – our best-loved investigator of London’s underbelly – has spent over fifteen years uncovering the stories of this hidden world. Now, he brings together 100 of his favourite abandoned places from across the capital: many of them more magnificent, more beautiful and more evocative than you can imagine. Covering everything from the overgrown stands of Leyton Stadium to the windswept alleys of the Aylesbury Estate, DERELICT LONDON reveals a side of the city you never knew existed. It will change the way you see London. ______________________________ PRAISE FOR THE DERELICT LONDON PROJECT ‘Fascinating images showing some of London’s eeriest derelict sites show another side to the busy, built-up capital.’ Daily Mail ‘Talling has managed to show another side to the capital, one of abandoned buildings that somehow retain a sense of beauty.’ Metro ‘Excellent . . . As much as it is an inadvertent vision of how London might look after a catastrophe, DERELICT LONDON is valuable as a document of the one going on right in front of us.’ New Statesman ‘From the iconic empty shell of Battersea Power Station to the buried ‘ghost’ stations of the London Underground, the city is peppered with decaying buildings. Paul Talling knows these places better than anyone in the capital.’ Daily Express ‘[London has an] unusual (and deplorable) number of abandoned buildings. Paul Talling’s surprise bestseller, DERELICT LONDON, is their shabby Pevsner.’ Daily Telegraph ______________________________




A Culture of Silence


Book Description

In 2005, while researching the implications of the Civil Partnerships Act, HM Treasury and the Department of Trade and Industry concluded that 6%% of the population of the United Kingdom should be classed as gay; one in every 16.6 people and an estimated 3.5 million people in total. As of 2012, there are over 4,000 professional footballers currently playing the game in England alone. Despite this, there are currently no openly gay professional footballers in the country. However, to suggest that this issue is exclusive to English football would be drastically wide of the mark. In actual fact, this complete lack of openly gay professional players can be observed throughout all of the top professional football leagues across the world. 'A Culture of Silence' tells the story of football's problematic relationship with homosexuality and of the homophobia that, unquestionably, still plagues the sport.




British Football and Social Exclusion


Book Description

This book takes stock of British football at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It is written by a range of concerned academics and writers, all of whom have an active relationship with the contemporary football world. The book assesses the changes that have occurred in many areas of football culture and the political and academic debates that have accompanied these changes. English football in particular, it seems, is 'fat city'. The Premiership, now eight years old, has, via satellite television, become a globalised phenomenon: there are Liverpool supporters in Bangladesh, Chelsea fans in sub-Saharan Africa and Manchester United followers across the globe. Grounds are full. Top class football attracts people to bars and pubs in huge numbers. Hooliganism appears a thing of the past. Everyone seems to love football and/or to support a team. The British football media are generally euphoric in their rendering of contemporary football culture. However, the contributors to this book argue that the heavily commodified, PR-driven and cartelised British football world, with which so many contemporary politicians and other public figures rush to identify themselves, has either created, exacerbated or continued to ignore serious problems of social exclusion problems of class and community, race and ethnicity, gender, sexuality and age.




The Football Shirts Book


Book Description

They think it’s all over...it is now, with this comprehensive guide to football shirts through the years. From the obscure to the ubiquitous, The Football Shirts Book is packed with over 150 original and super rare shirts from the greatest game on earth. Covering everything from the iconic to the unusual, even the most hard-core fans will find out something new about the kit of their favourite team. Including full-colour photography, as well as interviews with football shirt design teams, musicians, and fashion designers, this guide offers a full exploration of the brands, design, and sponsorship history behind the world’s best-loved football shirts. It is a must-have for those crazy about football shirts, as well as those whose interest is piqued by history, design, and pop-culture.




A Fan's Guide


Book Description

The contents of the book provide a wealth of information for the large number of fans who are interested in the history and heritage of British league grounds and is also handy and useful reference source for fans visiting grounds around the country. This is a serious and factual book though tackled in an attractive and accessible way.