Football Nation: Sixty Years of the Beautiful Game - Softcover

'Fascinating and entertaining study ... As accounts of one sport's pivotal role in society go, this would be hard to beat' Irish Times 'As Ward and Williams clearly demonstrate ...while the English game is many things - brave, fair, violent, tragic, romantic, funny ... it is not pretty. And that, of course, is just the way we, and many millions around the world, like it' Daily Mail 'Genuinely fresh appraisals on all manner of topics, from the obvious to the not-so-obvious ... A treasure' Sports Journalists' Association 'A weighty tome on the development of football in the post-war Britain ... [it] reads like a companion volume to David Kynaston's magisterial popular history of the Attlee years, Austerity Britain' The Oldie

Football is at the heart of British national identity. Through more than forty fascinating stories, "Football Nation" reveals the hidden and not-so-hidden history of the game since 1945. From the mass audiences of austerity Britain when footballers were amateurs through the arrival of the Premiership after the Hillsborough disaster to the present day when top-flight players command a higher weekly wage than the average spectator can earn in a year, Andrew Ward and John Williams reveal the truth about the national game as it once was and is today. "Football Nation" is informed, wryly amusing, often surprising and always vastly entertaining. It offers an entirely fresh perspective on the history of the beautiful game in Britain.