It was the summer of 1983. Walsall were preparing for yet another season in Division Three when, out of the blue, British Airways got in touch. They were launching an innovative advertising campaign and wanted to feature the team underneath the banner 'They're only 90 minutes away from a place in Europe'. The idea was to show how quickly European cities could be reached from Birmingham Airport, while gently mocking the West Midlands' least successful football club. As the season got underw...

Tinpot is the story of football's lost tournaments: the strange and forgotten competitions that sparked into life before shuffling off their mortal coil. The book tells their stories, giving them the spotlight they deserve.It's time for something different. It's time to go somewhere new. It's time to wander off the highways of football history and see where long-discarded paths lead.England's major football tournaments seem to have been with us for...

Relive Walsall FC's greatest moments through the eyes of its legends. Sixteen Walsall legends share their memories of the club's most unforgettable games. From Allan Clarke's FA Cup recollections to Adam Chambers's Wembley experience, this collection spans half a century of Saddlers history.Discover the inside stories behind thrilling encounters, including Alan Buckley's account of conquering Manchester United and Peter Hart's memories of facing Arsenal and Liverpo...

What if Scotland won the first World Cup? If Only challenges the perception that soccer history couldn't have been different. This book reflects on what football history could have been, what it might have been, and in some cases, what it probably should have been.Simon Turner imagines a world in which Scotland win the first-ever World Cup, Derby County are champions of Europe, and 1966 isn't the only year that England win anything. Through counterfactual ...

A man walks into a Birmingham bookshop, buys a volume of poetry, and steps out into the road, where a jazz musician seems momentarily to bring the whole city together. In the second poem in Playing the Changes, the same thing happens, only half the words are redacted. Then the experience is retold as a Petrarchan sonnet; a children's skipping rhyme; an Acknowledgements page; a pastiche of Tristram Shandy...Drawing on the traditions of jazz improvisation and Oulipo...

African migrants have become increasingly demonised in public debate and political rhetoric. There is much speculation about the incentives and trajectories of Africans on the move, and often these speculations are implicitly or overtly geared towards discouraging and policing their movements. What is rarely understood or scrutinised however, are the intricate ways in which African migrants are marginalised and excluded from public discourse; not only in Europe but in migrant-receiving con...

Reflections on Life in Ghettos, Camps and Prisons explores the relationship between ghettos, camps, places of detention and prisons with a focus on those people who are confined, encamped, imprisoned, detained, stuck, or forcibly removed through the lens of ‘stuckness’.From a point of departure in anthropology, with important contributions from criminology, geography and philosophy, the chapters explore how life is lived in and across these sites of confinement by focusing...

Featuring essays by world-renowned scholars, Diasporas charts the various ways in which global population movements and associated social, political and cultural issues have been seen through the lens of diaspora.Wide-ranging and interdisciplinary, this collection considers critical concepts shaping the field, such as migration, ethnicity, post-colonialism and cosmopolitanism. It also examines key intersecting agendas and themes, including political economy, security, race, gender,...

Based on thorough ethnographic fieldwork in a refugee camp in Tanzania this book provides a rich account of the benevolent “disciplining mechanisms” of humanitarian agencies, led by the UNHCR, and of the situated, dynamic, indeterminate, and fluid nature of identity (re)construction in the camp. While the refugees are expected to behave as innocent, helpless victims, the question of victimhood among Burundian Hutu is increasingly challenged, following the 1993 massacres in Burundi and the ...

Brian Clough's forty-four-day tenure as manager of Leeds United in 1974 is one of the most infamous episodes in British football history.While the bestselling The Damned United was a fictional account of Clough's short-lived but controversial reign at the club, We Are the Damned United reveals the true story, as told by the players he managed at the time.It includes candid contributions from legendary names such as Peter Lorimer, Eddie Gray and Terry Yorat...

From subtle discrimination in everyday life and scandals in politics, to incidents like lynchings in the American South, cultural imperialism, and 'ethnic cleansing', racism exists in many different forms, in almost every facet of society. But what actually is race? How has racism come to be so firmly established? Why do so few people actually admit to being racist? How are race, ethnicity, and xenophobia related? Racism: A Very Short Introduction incorporates the latest research to demyst...

The European Union (EU) stands out as a fascinatingly unique political organisation. On the one hand, it has shown the potential for developing deep and wide-ranging cooperation between member states, going far beyond that found anywhere else in the world. On the other, it is currently in the throes of a phase of profound uncertainty about its viability and future. Showing how and why the EU has developed from 1950 to the present day, this Very Short Introduction covers a range of...