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
'The Craft’s first martyr', John Coustos 'became a celebrity and a sensational symbol for the causes it would claim: tolerance, rational inquiry, cross-border cosmopolitanism, relative equality and enlightened faith.'
@darrin_mcmahon on the freemasons.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/with-a-nudge-a-wink
'"Dutch Light" roots its subject in his local environment, explaining, for example, how an abundance of sand for making glass led naturally to a thriving business in optical instruments in Holland.'
Patricia Fara on the life & work of Christiaan Huygens.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/through-the-magnifying-glass
Sign up to our e-newsletter!
Get highlights from the new issue and selected archive articles, as well as exclusive competitions and subscription offers delivered straight to your inbox.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/freenewsletter