Neil Lanham – författare

Winning with the Invisibles is the untold story of Neil Lanham, an unheralded statistician who became one of football’s trailblazing analysts and helped start a silent revolution. He talked his way into his first job in football with John Docherty at Cambridge United, where he devised a system to decode what was really happening on the pitch. His discoveries about the numbers that matter in winning games were ground-breaking. Lanham’s breakthrough came with Wimbledon’s Crazy Gang, when he helped Dave Bassett transform a squad of so-called misfits and journeymen into one of English football’s most unlikely and heart-warming fairy tales, as they rose from the lower divisions to the top flight and FA Cup glory. Success followed at Sheffield United and back at Cambridge with John Beck, though Neil’s contributions were often undervalued, even by club directors. He compensated with bold wagers at the bookies, backing his insights in an era when betting on your own team was still allowed. This is the story of one of the invisible pioneers who kicked off football’s data revolution, but whose theories may outrage today’s tacticians.

I Bid You Farewell captures the drama, wit and wisdom of a lifetime in the antiques trade. Set against the backdrop of Suffolk’s market towns and quiet villages, Lanham charts an era of remarkable change in Britain’s auction houses, from the austere post-war years through the booming era of the 1980s.This is the story of a young auctioneer, starting at seventeen in a cattle market, qualifying and then buying a rundown rural auction business. Readers will discover how, from a standing start, with no telephone in his hired hall, Lanham achieved over a hundred world-wide record prices of fine art at auction. He explains the complex psychology of dealers and collectors and reveals the stories behind these extraordinary prices. Being on his own, using his personal observation, he was able to speedily change course to rapidly unfolding new markets caused firstly by Harold Wilson devaluing the pound and then Margaret Thatcher selling off ‘the family silver’. It is a true insight into the secrets of the auctioneer’s mind. Written as an amusing whole-life adventure of numerous stories, it shares much knowledge, wisdom and humour.Rich in character and incident, with an insider’s eye for detail and a storyteller’s gift for bringing the past to life, Lanham shares the secrets of the trade while documenting a vanishing world of traditional market towns and autonomous local businesses. I Bid You Farewell is not just the story of one man’s career – it’s a love letter to the art of the auction and a valuable historical document of Britain’s antiques trade during a period of unprecedented change.