The Footballer Who Could Fly

Jan 22, 2025 5:55 AM

Author:Duncan Hamilton

'Without football, we were strangers under a shared roof. With it, we were father and son.’

Inspired by his father’s devotion to Newcastle United and the heroes of yesteryear, Duncan Hamilton brings to life a bygone age telling the story of British football from the hardscrabble 1940s and the ‘never-had-it-so-good’ ’50s right through to the dowdy First Division of the ’70s and ’80s, and today’s slick Premiership. Hamilton recalls some of football’s most sublime players, managers and characters, from Bill Shankly and Jackie Milburn to George Best and Lionel Messi.

But at the heart of The Footballer Who could Fly is Hamilton’s relationship with his own father. Here he tells how football became the only real connection between two people who, apart from their love of the beautiful game, were wholly different from one another.

Reviews

Heart-crackingly nostalgic

—— The Times

Spellbindingly evocative ... an unforgettable homage not only to his father but to his flat-capped generation of ye grand olde days of thud and mud and Saturday's teatime urban gloaming.

—— Observer

Pitch perfect … This marvellous and affecting book, which is about love and fatherhood and history and manners as much as it is about football … Hamilton is a first-rate pen-portraitist.

—— Spectator

Hamilton wrote two of the best sports books of recent years, on Brian Clough and the cricketer Harold Larwood ... a fine collection of vignettes ... make this another winner.

—— Sunday Times

Hamilton takes us on a hugely enjoyable nostalgia trip...a moving depiction of how football can bind together a family.

—— Sunday Express

The book is sincere and deeply honouring of Hamilton’s father as well as dead greats such as Lawton, Shankly, Jackie Milburn, Duncan Edwards and Bobby Moore...

—— Financial Times

Hamilton brings football home...heart-crackingly nostalgic ... eye-wateringly evocative.

—— Blackpool Gazette

Touching

—— Sport Magazine

A beautiful, heart-cracking memoir by a sublime writer

—— Saga Magazine

Top sports writer Michael Calvin lifts the lid on the talent scouts

—— Sunday Express

It's superb, one of the best of the year. One of those books where you learn something every couple of pages.

—— Iain Macintosh , co-author of Football Manager Stole My Life

A must-read for all soccer fans

—— Choice

Lucidly researched

—— David Miller , The Oldie

The unlikely true story of two US ex-pros who travelled to Rwanda with visions of creating Africa’s first world-beating professional cycling team

—— Simon Usborne , Independent

This book is an entertaining account taking in everyone from stage winners and former yellow jerseys who couldn’t hang on, to a breakaway leader who stopped for a bottle of wine and then took a wrong turn, to a doper whose drug cocktail backfired

—— Bike Radar

We know the winners of the Tour de France, but Lanterne Rouge tells the forgotten, often inspirational and occasionally absurd stories of the last-placed rider

—— Miss Dinky

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