Statutory Supplement to Admiralty and Maritime Law in the United States Book

Who wrote the book?

David Winner. Author of the brilliant, Brilliant Orange, still my favorite football book. He also worked with Dennis Bergkamp on the outstanding Stillness and Speed and translated Ajax, Barcelona, Cruyff.

He can be found on Twitter @dwinnera

What’s it about?

The simple answer is that in Those Feet Winner has attempted to do for English football, what he did for Dutch. It takes its name from the line on the William Blake poem which was set to music as the hymn Jerusalem and later covered by the renowned Fat Les ahead of Euro 2000

‘And did those feet in ancient time,
Walk upon Englands mountains green’

Any readers of Brilliant Orange will know to expect an unorthodox approach to football history and Those Feet is no different. As Winner states in the introduction, ‘(r)reflecting on the essential Englishness of English football too to deeper, more primal themes. Sex and memory. Grace and violence. Laughter and war. Manliness. History.’ All are covered. Winner’s aim is to explain why English football is characterized by a direct approach, of bravery and fair play.

What are the best bits?

The subtitle of the book is ‘A Sensual History of English Football’ and Winner devotes the opening of the book to the rise of football in the English Private Schools as an antidote to the (insert name’ of Masturbation. The research is extensive and it is clear that finding means to keep adolescent boys active was certainly a genesis in the formation of organized sport. However, I do feel that the book over-plays this and that what might have been a humorous additional detail extends to an entire chapter.

‘Reeping the Whirlwind’ on the Charles Reep influence and England’s ‘Military Mentality to football’ will be familiar to readers of Inverting the Pyramid, but Winner’s book was written first. In the ‘The Phantom Limb’ chapter Winner explores the self-loathing streak the English have, their obsession with Empire and World War 2, and how that is reflected in their media, their fans, and their on-the-field play.

Winner delves into the English pre-disposition for nostalgia, just as prevalent in football, an element of the ‘Heritage Industry’ and there’s an excellent chapter on English fan culture, which still remains one of the game’s most revered, and the subsequent literature that grew up alongside this. There’s a nice interview with Fever Pitch author Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch) a seminal book but one which created a genre of self-deprecating fan writing, none of which lived up to the original. As Hornby states: “It’s just one joke: “it’s cold and we’re rubbish”.

Winner has a keen eye for cause and effect and in the ‘Cooling the Blood’ section he looks at how the climate has impacted the playing fields of England, and thus, the style of play most effective.

Final Word

English football and English culture is certainly an extensive topic and few have attempted it. Winner makes a fair fist of it and perhaps for the foreign reader, it would have the same effect on them as Brilliant Orange did on me, in learning about the Dutch. That being said, I feel like there are a number of topics missed in the book. Firstly, there is little mention of hooliganism, the England fan abroad, and historically far-right elements of that movement as well as the concept of Englishness versus Britishness. There is little on Race within the English game and the ascension of black players into the National team during the 80s.

I would have liked to have seen more distinct correlations made between Winner’s subject matter and the product on the field. There’s not a lot on the tactics of the English game, aside from the work of Reep, and given Winner’s other works, this is a topic he is capable of providing excellent commentary on. Lastly, the sources in this book ultimately let Winner down. In Brilliant Orange we have Johnny Rep, in Those Feet, we have an Italian agent I’ve never heard of.

That being said, there’s enough good stuff in here that showcases Winner at his best and he’s got plenty credit in the bank with me following Brilliant Orange. In many ways, it's the perfect tribute to England, capable of brilliance but also liable to get knocked out of a major tournament by Iceland. Quite simply, it’s an incredibly large couple of topics: English football and English history, and it would be impossible to create a definitive account in 400 pages. It may well be that there is no one had one unifying concept, that is the exploration of space, like in Brilliant Orange that connects English football, but Winner offers a number of lenses through which we can view the English game and he does it in an inquisitive and entertaining manner.

If this book was a team: England, World Cup 2010