A packed and entertaining book . . . Exhaustively researched and beautifully written

Wonderfully crafted . . . One of the most gifted chroniclers of mountaineering . . . Perrin records it all with a subtle sympathy, laying bare British mountaineering's most mythologized figure

An extraordinarily rich and unsentimental vision . . . The genius of this exceptional biography is that it articulates both sides of Whillans' character . . . It is by turns funny and tragic . . . This is a fine book. It was worth the wait

Compelling, beautifully written . . . There could not have been a better writer qualified to tell it

A kind of modern tragedy . . . Yet for all his failings, Whillans remains a legend

Created an enduring, breathtaking legend

A blow-by-blow account that puts the reader at the heart of the drama (****)

Throws a whole new light on the disaster

Among the Thugs is, by some distance, the best book ever written about football violence. Intelligent, succinct, and always in the thick of it, it reads as a blood-fuelled ode to English football, and as a primer for what will be when Russia hosts the World Cup. It grabs the readers attention like a headbutt to the cakehole.

Sizzling writing to rival the best of white-heat gonzo journalism

An extraordinary and powerful cautionary cry.

Brilliant. . . one of the most unnerving books you will ever read

Buford creates with the majesty of a Tom Wolfe the ultimate price paid by so many for this footballing fever - the Hillsborough disaster, recalled with electrifying eloquence and power

A grotesque, horrifying, repellent and gorgeous book; A Clockwork Orange come to life.

A very readable, often funny, book.

His prose is tough and vivid

Buford pushes the possibilities of participatory journalism to a disturbing degree . . . Among the Thugs does severe damage to the conventional wisdom that England and Europe are bastions of civilization.

Buford's book is important in that it offers a far more compelling explanation for the football violence than any offered by the pundits of Left and Right . . . Had Buford's account been written by a tabloid reporter or an academic sociologist it might be more easily dismissed. That is comes from a highly intelligent observer, and a neutral outsider with no axe to grind, makes his book all the more powerful and yet troubling.

Buford’s accounts of the thugs he moved with are by turns amazing, repugnant, stunning, horrid and exhilarating.

The defining book on England’s hooliganism