Enjoy Life

Summer 2024 Books

The pick of the latest hardbacks and paperbacks, reviewed by Simon Evans

Brian Moore Saved Our Sundays, by Matt Eastley

Sunday afternoon TV soccer was a rite of passage for any self-respecting young soccer fan in the Seventies and Eighties, before the twin behemoths of Sky and the Premier League changed everything.

Which is why this wonderfully nostalgic history of regional soccer TV, presumably the first of a series as it only goes up until the end of the 74-75 season, is so valuable. Not only does it trace the history of each of the regional programmes, but it also picks out key moments, matches, goals, and controversies, even suggesting the reason why the Arsenal seemed to dominate London Weekend Television’s Big Match coverage season after season, much to the chagrin of Spurs fans in particular.

Above all, of course, it celebrates such broadcasting titans as Gerald Sinstadt, Gerry Harrison, Hugh Johns and the avuncular, unflappable Brian Moore, Big Match host and face of ITV soccer for more than 30 years. We will not see their like again.

Published by Pitch Publishing Price £14.99 Pages 368 ISBN 9781801507165

 Paul Foot, A Life In Politics, by Margaret Renn

The Sixties and Seventies was the golden age of investigative journalism, when newspaper proprietors thought nothing of funding prolonged and often expensive probes into stories that might not lead anywhere, and frequently didn’t.

No one practised this lost art more effectively than Paul Foot, the subject of this excellent, in-depth and sympathetic, but by no means hagiographic, biography. The only surprise is that such a valuable account of his life and work has not appeared already given Foot’s huge influence on journalism during his lifetime.

A public schoolboy born into privilege – his father was the last Governor of Cyprus and Jamaica – Foot also had a rich radical heritage, his grandfather Isaac having been a Liberal MP and uncle Michael famously one of the leading Labour politicians of the last century.

Foot’s political journey, however, took him to the far left and what would become the Socialist Workers Party and this would hugely influence his journalism, in particular his burning desire to call to account the powerful and stand up for the victims of what he saw as an inherently oppressive social order.

This led Foot into investigating several miscarriages of justice, mostly successfully, although his long campaign to clear the name of the hanged A6 murderer James Hanratty proved ultimately fruitless when DNA evidence finally proved that Hanratty was, indeed, guilty (Foot still disputed this).

Foot’s work on the magazine Private Eye, which he helped co-found and was always his spiritual home, resulted in the exposure of local government corruption – the Poulson affair – and, towards the end of his life (Foot died in 2004) the scandal of New Labour’s Private Finance Initiative, the accountancy sleight of hand that ended up saddling the NHS and the education system with decades of debt.

The author of this excellent book worked with Foot during his time at the Daily Mirror, and witnessed first hand not just his tenacity at digging out a story or righting an injustice but also Foot’s humour, kindness and ability to see the goodness in others, even those who would be considered his natural enemies.

One incident stands out; Foot, a prophet of Marxist revolution, returning to the Private Eye offices after interviewing Enoch Powell, shaking his head and muttering “I liked him, I liked him.” Such was the measure of the man.

Published by Verso Price £30 Pages 368 ISBN 9781804291900

One Wrong Turn, by CM Ewan

Driving late at night down foggy West Country roads a young couple, Ali and Ben, take a wrong turn and nearly run over a man apparently stranded, with a woman holding a baby seat in a nearby car. Against Ali’s better judgment they agree to give the couple a lift, and it soon becomes clear all is not as it seems with the two people who are now in the back seat of the car.

Nightmare piles upon nightmare as shocking truths are revealed. That lift may have been Ben and Ali’s biggest mistake, but could also be their last. This genuinely chilling and compelling thriller is another winner from the justly acclaimed author of The Interview and The House Hunt.

Published by Macmillan Price £16.99 Pages 432 ISBN 9781035042944

1967, by Robyn Hitchcock

Robyn Hitchcock is one of those artists who seem to spend their careers hovering just below the radar of the mainstream but are hugely influential among their peers – his songs have been performed by the likes of REM, Gillian Welch, Suzanne Vega and The Replacements.

Between 1976 and 1981 Robyn enjoyed some success with psychedelic revivalists The Soft Boys, peddling the sparkling jingle-jangle sounds of mid-Sixties pop amidst the grime of punk and post-punk, and proving to be at least ten years ahead of the game in the process.

The thing is, as Robyn notes in this enjoyable memoir, 1967, the year of peace, love, flower power and psychedelia, had already changed him, defined him and has never left him. That’s why the book’s scope is restricted to the short period spanning Robyn’s arrival at high end Winchester College as a 12-year-old in 1966 and ending with him watching Magical Mystery Tour at home on TV as 1967 drew to a close.

During that period of not much more than a year his musical identity was almost fully formed thanks to the music of Hendrix, The Beatles, The Kinks and Dylan.

As Robyn explains with wit, humour and admirable honesty, this amazing soundtrack to the year contrasted with the bleak realities and absurdities of public school life but this is no misery memoir; Robyn accepts his lot, grateful for his life to be enlivened by the wonderful sounds emanating from the sixth form common room record player and his portable Dansette. This, remember, was a time when a revelatory single or album was pretty much released every week.

If it wasn’t quite very heaven to be at Winchester College in 1967 it clearly wasn’t a bad life, and, as for the music, it never really got any better – did it? For Robyn, at least, it will always be his favourite year.

Published by Constable Price £22 Pages 232 ISBN 978-1408720554

Also recommended…

New to paperback, British Comics: A Cultural History, by James Chapman (Reaktion, £13.80) examines the history of these beloved artefacts of childhood, from the Victorian era to the present…

Dead Ground (Head of Zeus, £20) is the latest in Graham Hurley’s series of Spoils of War books, set during the Second World War and featuring leading figures of the era, with this instalment taking place amidst the chaos of the Spanish Civil War…

Inspired by Hitchcock’s classic film Vertigo, Eye of the Beholder, by Emma Bamford (Simon and Schuster, £20), is an intriguing thriller set in the beauty industry that involves a ghostwriter and the reappearance of a lover she thought was dead, and Tempe Brennan teams up with a new ally to investigate a mysterious arson in Fire and Bones, by Kathy Reichs (Simon and Schuster, £20)…

England’s Green, by David Matless (Reaktion, £15.45), explores how the country’s connection with the environment has shaped and reflected English national identity since the Sixties, touching on a wide range of issues including agriculture, climate change, folklore and culture, and Searching for Novak, by Mark Hodgkinson (Cassell, £22) is an in-depth portrait of the enigmatic tennis champion Novak Djokovic…

The Gates of Hell, by Mark Hodgkinson (Cassell, £22) is the incredible story of the first Allied soldier to push open the gates of Belsen Concentration Camp in April 1945 and discover the horrors that lay within, and the materials that form the bedrock of our civilisation are the subject of Material World, by Ed Conway (WH Allen, £10.99)…

Dangerous secrets and dreams collide in Once Upon A Time In Venice (HarperCollins, £16.99), the latest absorbing novel from Carol Kirkwood, a family’s survival rests on the shoulders of a young woman in A Sister’s Fight, by Emma Hornby (Penguin, £8.99), and The Children Left Behind (Pan, £8.99) is the latest in Eliza Morton’s Liverpool Orphans series…

Patrick Bishop’s Paris ’44 (Viking, £25) is a fresh new account of the liberation of Paris, focussing on the unknown figures who played small but significant roles in this decisive moment in French history, Justinien Tribillon provides a fascinating alternative history of Paris in The Zone (Verso, £15.20), and The Paris Muse, by Louisa Treger, (Bloomsbury, £16.99), is a fictionalised retelling of the story of Doris Maar, the photographer, painter and poet who had a passionate, destructive, affair with Pablo Picasso in the years leading up to the Second World War…

A journalist discovers that having a head start on her rivals can have deadly consequences in Fiona Barton’s absorbing new standalone thriller, Talking to Strangers (Bantam, £18.99), fear inhabits a small town after a local girl is found murdered in Shari Lapena’s What Have You Done? (Bantam, £18.99) and a teacher’s act of heroism finds him the target of a blackmailer in Linwood Barclay’s I Will Ruin You (HarperCollins, £20

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