Duncan White
Thinking Inside the Box
The Outsider: A History of the Goalkeeper
By Jonathan Wilson
Orion 368pp £20 order from our bookshop
Does Your Rabbi Know You’re Here? The Story of English Football’s Forgotten Tribe
By Anthony Clavane
Quercus 269pp £17.99 order from our bookshop
I Am the Secret Footballer: Lifting the Lid on the Beautiful Game
By Anonymous
Guardian Books 230pp £12.99 order from our bookshop
Back in the early 1980s Martin Amis compared harbouring an intellectual interest in football to being a pervert. Reviewing a preposterous anthropological study of the game, he outed himself as one of a rare breed. ‘Pointy-headed football-lovers are a beleaguered crew, despised by pointy-heads and football-lovers alike … Oh, how we have to cringe and hide,’ he wrote, echoing Humbert Humbert. Yes, high-minded football-types enjoyed the social cachet of Lolita’s nympholept.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Has the printed book finally outlived its span?' asks @AdamCSDouglas. 'If so, how long can the rare book trade continue? And how much longer can we keep flying in fat-bellied jets to gather in some foreign land to exhibit our wares?'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/how-long-can-we-keep-doing-this
'The capital is revealed as a frightening, roiling place of disease and debauchery, the heads of traitors displayed on spikes, the sky leaden with fumes and fog.'
@MirandaFrance1 on Maggie O'Farrell's new plague-era novel, 'Hamnet'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/love-in-the-time-of-plague-2
I thoroughly enjoyed @MyBiggestLuke’s deliciously dark and funny new novel THEFT. My piece for @Lit_Review:
https://literaryreview.co.uk/on-deaf-ears
@andothertweets @stefantobler