Brian Glanville – författare

'The best book on football ever written'. No, that is not some copy-writer's hyperbole, it is the judgement of Franz Beckenbauer, winner of the World Cup as both player and manager.In Football Memories, Brian Glanville himself writes, 'The central character, Garry, was a Scottish inside-forward based on Danny Blanchflower. This, largely because the footballer had to be untypically intelligent and aware, as well as an accomplished performer. Danny, so fluent, so original, and in certain ways so flawed, seemed an ideal model. Yet he, or his surrogate, could not carry the whole book. I used various voices. His wife's. My own.'From J. B. Priestley's pre-publication endorsement - 'I enjoyed this highly original novel' - praise has been constant:'This is a brilliant novel. Any footballer can see a little of himself in Gerry Logan, as I did when I first read it. The book tells what the pressures are like in the game, the temptations to which successful players are exposed and yet the human qualities tell us much about society and human nature in general.' Derek Dougan'The best novel on soccer I have ever read.' Daily Herald'Soars into first class fiction.' The Spectator'An acid fable of our age, solid with expertise about football and its seamier secrets.' Daily Mail 'The whole world of big time soccer, with its glamour and bitter feuds, made very real.' Sunday Telegraph

Len Rawlings was the greatest goal-keeper of his time, but that was long ago. In The Dying of the Light we see a great footballer in sad decline living in wretched obscurity in a Croydon semi-detached. Rejected by his son, he still lives with his wife. Although loyal, she is bewildered and ineffectual. It falls to his school-teacher daughter, Jenny, to be his support. Defying him in childhood, she now feels his plight seeing him as a man who has been cruelly exploited, encouraged to 'live his life backwards', a man off whose heroics other people once fed their fantasies, and who has been cast aside now he can longer fulfil them. It is Jenny too who cannot bear to see him slipping ignominiously into disgrace, misery and ultimately death, she who wants him to make one final clarion protest against 'the dying of the light'.Though father and daughter they could scarcely be more dissimilar, and their joint narration of the story gives it a strange polarity, an unusual tension. For Jenny, professional football is something trivial, peripheral and adolescent. For Len, it is quite simply his life.

The Olympian is Ike Low, a young Cockney miler who is taken up by the eccentric, dominating coach, Sam Dee and turned into a world champion but at an immense human cost. The author himself writes, 'The Olympian can be read as an allegory, or as s straightforward story of an outstanding Cockney miler and his eccentric demanding coach. Ike Low, at the end, can be seen as a doomed Icarus, while the obsessional, deeply self-centred life of the international athlete has an almost Faustian quality. . . So Ike Low, groomed and driven by Sam Dee, his implacable coach, is at once hero and victim.On first publication in 1969, this novel attracted deservedly extravagant praise both in the UK and USA:'His tale is brilliantly told, rushing to a wildly exciting climax at Ike's second Olympic effort in Tokyo. And it is also as serious an effort as anyone has made to explore the tortures and indecisions of the totally dedicated athlete . . . He has picked (Ike) apart, found the delicate balance wheels inside and arrived at a tortuous, ironic absurdity. This absurdity races head and head with the sheer force of the narrative, right to the powerful, puzzling conclusion of this fine novel.' Pete Axthelm, Newsweek'One of the best sports novels of all time. No one who is seriously interested in sports or in modern fiction should miss it.' Bill Perkins, National Observer'Sheer unadulterated, unalloyed pleasure! How rarely that comes from a novel that is also first-rate.' Richard Lister, Evening Standard'The Olympian is a polished technical achievement, convincing in detail and affect.' William Trevor, The Guardian

'The best book on football ever written.' Franz Beckenbauer, winner of the World Cup as both player and manager.In Football Memories, Brian Glanville himself writes, 'The central character, Garry, was a Scottish inside-forward based on Danny Blanchflower. This, largely because the footballer had to be untypically intelligent and aware, as well as an accomplished performer. Danny, so fluent, so original, and in certain ways so flawed, seemed an ideal model. Yet he, or his surrogate, could not carry the whole book. I used various voices. His wife's. My own.'Ever since J. B. Priestley's pre-publication endorsement - 'I enjoyed this highly original novel' - praise has been constant:'This is a brilliant novel. Any footballer can see a little of himself in Gerry Logan, as I did when I first read it. The book tells what the pressures are like in the game, the temptations to which successful players are exposed and yet the human qualities tell us much about society and human nature in general.' Derek Dougan'The best novel on soccer I have ever read.' Daily Herald'Soars into first-class fiction.' The Spectator'An acid fable of our age, solid with expertise about football and its seamier secrets.' Daily Mail 'The whole world of big time soccer, with its glamour and bitter feuds, made very real.' Sunday Telegraph