Author: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.
an excellent new book ... Eat your heart out, ProZone.
—— The IndependentHis abilities are delivered with excellent understatement in Simon Hughes' Red Machine.
—— The IndependentOne of the finest fighters on the planet
—— GuardianIf you've never climbed, Higher Than the Eagle Soars can still be read for its old-fashioned, self-effacing humour, as the story of a cultured man determined to place himself inside a tradition he loves. Or you can read it for the thrills and spills
—— M. John Harrison , GuardianThis is a memoir run through with humanity, humour and a deep abiding love of high mountains and the adventures they provide
—— Great OutdoorsIridescent
—— Sunday TimesAmply researched and gracefully told
—— New YorkerSullivan has found the transcendent in the house
—— Sports IllustratedBracingly eccentric…Sullivan is a remarkable writer
—— Jane Shilling , Sunday TelegraphIt's a good, funny, moving book... [Sullivan] is unfailingly good company, always curious, often very funny
—— Theo Tait , GuardianSullivan knows how to craft a paragraph and tell a story
—— Sunday Business PostReads as what it is: a great first book
—— Jon Day , New StatesmanThis morning Blood Horses showed up in the post. It’s Sullivan’s first book, a memoir about his late sportswriter father as well as a study of equine racing and breeding and obsessing over. We’re only 30 pages in but we’re convinced Sullivan wins it by a length and then some. He’s the best thing to come out of the south since 2 Chainz
—— Dazed and ConfusedA truly fascinating and brilliantly written memoir recounting Sullivan’s relationship with his writer father but also a detailed examination of horse racing, the love of his father’s life, as well as an entire treatise on the relationship between man and horse
—— Doug Johnstone , The Big IssueBlood Horses blends history, reportage and personal essay. The book is an excellent example of the mixed form that the critic Northrop Frye once called an “anatomy”. [Sullivan’s] enthusiasm rubs off
—— John Sunyer , Financial TimesBrilliant, sometimes maddeningly discursive memoir… Sullivan writes beautifully. Blood Horses makes better reading than the smoothly finished works of less witty and accomplished writers
—— Nick Rennison , Sunday TimesAll the elegance and craft [Sullivan] displayed in [Pulphead] are present once again
—— Tim Lewis , ObserverLuminous, hard-to-characterise book... By the sheer fizzing excellence of his writing [Sullivan] carries off the difficult task he set himself triumphantly
—— Simon Redfern , Independent on SundayIt’s a daring approach combining memoir and reportage and, beneath it all, the autobiographical theme of his attempt to understand his father, but it works magnificently
—— Christena Appleyard , Literary ReviewThe prose is relaxed, the choice of material telling; it is once more a delight to be in his company
—— Paul Laity , Prospect