**Shortlisted for the Cricket Writers Club 'Book of the Year' 2022 and the Sunday Times Sports Book Awards 'Cricket Book of the Year' 2023In telling the story of cricket from the bottom up, Different Class demonstrates how the "quintessentially English" game has done more to divide, rather than unite, the English.**In 1963, the West Indian Marxist C.L.R. James posed the deceptively benign question: "What do they know of cricket, who only c...

Emerging from the ‘history from below’ movement, sport history was marginalised for decades by those working within more traditional historical fields (and institutions). Although a degree of ignorance still exists, sport history has now acquired a level of credibility through the dedicated work of professional historians. And yet, as this authority has been established, changes to UK higher education funding (the removal of direct state funding, the Research Excellence Framework, and tuit...

‘The latest in the series of powerful books on the divisions in modern Britain, and will take its place on many bookshelves beside Reni Eddo-Lodge’s Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race and Owen Jones’s Chavs.’–Andrew Marr, Sunday Times‘In his fascinating, enraging polemic, Verkaik touches on one of the strangest aspects of the elite schools and their product’s domination of public life for...

Rugby union has undergone immense change in the past two decades - introducing a World Cup, accepting professionalism and creating a global market in players - yet no authoritative English-language general history of the game has been published in that time. Until now.A Game for Hooligans brings the game's colourful story up to date to include the 2007 World Cup. It covers all of the great matches, teams and players but also explores the social, political and economic chan...

Celtic Football Club has a huge support in Ireland, many of whom regularly travel to watch their team in Glasgow or follow them on TV. Now, "Celtic FC - The Ireland Connection" explores the deep-rooted links between Celtic Football Club, Ireland and the 90 million supporters of Irish descent throughout the world - links which include the club's founder Brother Walfrid from Sligo; the first sod of turf on Celtic Park in 1892 from Donegal; why the Irish flag flies over the stadium; Celtic's ...

This book contains everything you need to pass the Life in the UK test - FIRST TIME! 1: All the official study material 2: Test questions and glossary at the end of each topic 3: Study techniques to help you learn quicker and easier

What If? is an entertaining, thoughtful, provocative and original look at some of the milestones of twentieth century Irish history that offers a glimpse of what might have been. We all know that there was nothing inevitable about much of modern Ireland's history. Things could have turned out very differently, so it is natural to wonder what would have happened if certain events had never occurred or happened in a different way. What If? is the thought-provoking, enjoyable and insightful b...

Called ‘the greatest game of all’ by its supporters but often overlooked by the cultural mainstream, no sport is more identified with England’s northern working class than rugby league.This book traces the story of the sport from the Northern Union of the 1900s to the formation of the Super League in the 1990s, through war, depression, boom and deindustrialisation, into a new economic and social age.Using a range of previously unexplored archival sources, this extremely rea...

There can be no relationship in Europe's history more creative, significant, vexed and uneasy than that between Scotland and England. From the Middle Ages onwards the island of Britain has been shaped by the unique dynamic between Edinburgh and London, exchanging inhabitants, monarchs, money and ideas, sometimes in a spirit of friendship and at others in a spirit of murderous dislike.Tom Devine's seminal new book explores this extraordinary history in all its ambiguity, from the se...

Should England be independent from Scotland?May 1999. The Scots have their first opportunity in 300 years to elect their own parliament. In 2014 that referendum will finally take place.To many in England, the continuing rise of Scottish nationalism causes unease. Scotland could well choose to leave the United Kingdom. In this provocative polemic, Simon Heffer argues that England must let Scotland go. The lessons of trying to coerce Ireland should have been learnt: there is ...

Founded in 1884 to promote Irish identity and revive the traditional sports of hurling, football and handball, the GAA enjoyed an intimate relationship with the nationalist movement from the turn of the twentieth century onwards. In 1914, the Irish Volunteers drilled with hurley sticks in the absence of rifles; after the 1916 Rising many of those interned by the British were GAA members; and on 21 November 1920, a Gaelic football match between Dublin and Tipperary at Croke Park was interru...

Seán Lemass enjoys unrivalled acclaim as the 'Architect of Modern Ireland'. Yet there remain great gaps in our knowledge of this mythic figure and his golden age. Up to now Lemass, a colossus of twentieth-century Irish history, was airbrushed to fit a narrative of national progress. Today, this narrative is undergoing an agonising reappraisal. This groundbreaking study reveals the man behind the myth and asks questions previously skirted around. What emerges is an authoritarian, cunning, w...