Rick Walton – författare

There are very few original voices. Rick Walton is one. Beautiful Games, despite being something of a sequel to The Dots Will Not Be Joined, stands out, feels unique. Sure, it's about a life in sport and the power of and necessity for active cultures but Walton again takes on the universe. It's charged, unashamedly philosophical: 'authentic, wise, and beautiful'.Largely autobiograpical - 'to be clear and true' - the book is in three sections. 'Formations' leads off in a mire of weird-but-all-pervasive discrimination, in Northern England: with young lives somehow made blissful by familial love and several hours of footie *every day*. The local park becomes not just the place to head cannonballs but the site of something big. Heading a football becomes big.Then there is crushing, multiple loss, addressed directly, remembered through tears. Then adventure, with sport often the way in, across the hemisphere, from Grimsby to Thunder Bay and back to Wales. The wonders; the 'soccer'; the Italians; the knives. Madness; hilarity; joy. Big, filmic, relatable stories.Part Two is about who has inspired this life in games - and maybe how. So brilliance and good practice. All Blacks; Clough; Guardiola; Stokes/McCullum and England Women Cricket. Not a comprehensive list but a nod towards genius, behaviours, 'positives'. Part Three is where the author - an award-winning sports coach and teacher - makes the Case for Sport. Why and how. By looking at nuts and bolts: Sport Development; research; critical insights; urgency. We drive towards the conclusion that we must, for our communities, for our wellbeing, get moving.

Power Chords is 'a life set to music. Beautifully told'. Specifically the lived experience of punk. How it changed people. Why it changed people. Why a 'new wave' of protest art was necessary then - in 1976 - and why it is necessary now. (Hmmm. Because Trump and the mad-bad populists, because austerity, because the staggering and immoral disparity in wealth distribution?)This is the story of the energy that is anger changing a life. Anger and political/philosophical awakening. The kind of thing that happens when you're a teenager and when things look outrageously bad. It's personal, mischievous, serious, articulate and maybe a little wild. The writer thinks he's Elvis Costello. The writer thinks he's Sigmund Freud. The book surges everywhere - it's funny, daft, authoritative and fearlessly behind what's good."What I'm getting at is I can't think of a more vital time for music (& young people) to discover or re-discover their conscience & their agency".There is an appreciation of the central figures of British New Wave - Lydon; Costello; Weller; Strummer; Mark E Smith - and how it felt to be a Buzzcock or a Bunnyman. There is a notable dismemberment of Thatcher. Mostly there is a real love for and understanding of the music.1976 to about 1980 was special. The author is wise and fair enough to try to place it in the wider context of wonderful and seminal protest music but he passionately and compellingly argues the Case for Punk... and the need for Punk 2, now.

THE DOTS WILL NOT BE JOINED is both a rich, sentimental memoir and a racy 'Compendium of Ideas'. It's about sport (mainly football and cricket) but it carries wise, sometimes cheeky diversions - snapshots into what makes us and what liberates us. The *stories* and the challenges range. Rick Walton is a coach and a writer with a fearless, impossibly positive streak coursing through him. He recounts scary or electrifying visits to football and those wonderfully daft adventures so many of us have had in village teams. Combs forgotten in boots; lacerating North Sea gales; chunks of orange and blissfully sweet tea; 'team talks'. But we also have Proper Coaching - notions around how to approach and nourish and support players. There is the contention, too, that sport really can be 'good'; that how we play can matter. All this in a matrix of arty or philosophical hunches which unashamedly (but also humbly) celebrate the raw, The Human, the ridiculous, the unknowable, the 'unweighted'. Walton's book is a one-off, daring to chase a zillion narratives so as to capture something actually rather profound about how activity works, in a world where the 'Social' and Corporate kaleidoscopes are blurring, bending and maybe even crushing our will.