Joe Kennedy – författare

Is soccer inherently political? What does soccer actually mean today? Games Without Frontiers seeks force us to think about what we mean when we say ''soccer''. Along the way, it skewers media cliches about footballers and fans, considers the sport''s implications for radical politics and aesthetics, and situates the ''working-man''s game'' in relation to twenty-first century discussions of political authenticity. Written half as a travelogue, this book seeks to protect football from some of its would-be saviors without ever losing sight of what it means to have a fan''s investment in the game.

The test pilot and author of Nimrod Rise and Fall shares a collection of over twenty tales from the cockpit of Nimrod aircraft during the Cold War.As the first jet-powered maritime aircraft, the Hawker Siddeley Nimrod could reach critical points for rescues or for operational requirements in rapid time. Its outstanding navigation and electronics systems also allowed the Nimrod to be a first-class machine in antisubmarine warfare. In Nimrod Boys, author and pilot Tony Blackman offers vivid, firsthand accounts of the Nimrod''s UK-based and worldwide operations.The stories in this volume range from the Nimrod''s role during the Falklands Campaign and the First Gulf War to more recent anti-drug smuggling operations in the Caribbean. There are also descriptions of the Nimrod''s achievements in the International Fincastle Competition—where Royal Air Force squadrons competed against counterparts from Australia, Canada and New Zealand.With a variety of perspectives on Nimrod crew life, including from a female air electronic operator, readers will find dramatic, engaging and occasionally humorous stories. One flight test observer also reflects on the canceled Nimrod MR4 project.

We are entering, we are told, a post-liberal age. Authoritarian populism is in the political ascendant, and notions of permissiveness, multiculturalism and “identity politics” have allegedly failed us, meaning that we must now fall back on some notion of tradition. However, it’s not only the usual, conservative suspects who have got on board with this argument, but centrist politicians who, at least notionally, are hostile to the likes of Donald Trump and UKIP.Authentocrats examines this populism of the centre, and exposes how its spurious concern for “real people” is part of a broader turn within British culture (as exemplified in the brute masculinity of Daniel Craig’s James Bond, the allegedly "progressive" patriotism of nature writing, and a televisual obsession with the World Wars), as it withdraws from the openness of the Nineties under the bad-faith supposition that there’s nowhere to go but backwards.In their declaration that the left can only save itself by becoming less liberal, Authentocrats charges liberals themselves with fuelling the post-liberal turn, and asks where the space might be found for an alternative.

"The Authentocrats" claim to the be the new voice of common sense that speak for the common man and woman; right-wing, traditional and dangerous, Joe Kennedy argues that they are everything but what they purport to be.In contemporary Britain, a lot has been said about what it is that “real people” want politically. Forgotten by elites and sick of globalisation, so the story goes, they demand patriotism, respect for the military, assurances on defence, and controls on immigration. In trying to meet these supposed wishes, politicians attempt to appear normal, salt-of-the-earth, authentic. Authentocrats examines the function of this “authenticity” in a centrist politics which, paradoxically, often defines itself as cosmopolitan, technocratic and opposed to populism. Casting a doubtful eye over – amongst other things – latter-day James Bond films, contemporary nature writing and stand-up comedy, Authentocrats suggests that the sooner we can break with the sententiousness of a skewed conception of authenticity in aesthetics and politics the better.