Beastly Fury
The Strange Birth Of British Football
Published on 18. March 2010
Book
Paperback/Softback
336 pages
978-0-553-81935-9 (ISBN)
Description
"Footeballe is nothinge but beastlie furie and extreme violence", wrote Thomas Elyot in 1531. Nearly five hundred years later, the game may still seem furious and violent, but it has also become the most popular sport on the planet.
This is the story of how the modern, professional, spectator sport of football was born in Britain in the second half of the nineteenth century. It's a tale of testosterone-filled public schoolboys, eccentric mill-owners and bolshy miners, and of why we play football the way we do. Who invented heading? Why do we have an offside law? And why are foreigners so much better than us at the game we invented?
Based on exhaustive research, Beastly Fury picks apart the complex processes which forged the modern game, turning accepted wisdom on its head. It's a story which is strangely familiar - of grasping players, corrupt clubs and autocratic officials. It's a tale of brutality, but at times too, of surprising artistry. Above all it's a story of how football, uniquely among the sports of that era, became what it is today - the people's game.
This is the story of how the modern, professional, spectator sport of football was born in Britain in the second half of the nineteenth century. It's a tale of testosterone-filled public schoolboys, eccentric mill-owners and bolshy miners, and of why we play football the way we do. Who invented heading? Why do we have an offside law? And why are foreigners so much better than us at the game we invented?
Based on exhaustive research, Beastly Fury picks apart the complex processes which forged the modern game, turning accepted wisdom on its head. It's a story which is strangely familiar - of grasping players, corrupt clubs and autocratic officials. It's a tale of brutality, but at times too, of surprising artistry. Above all it's a story of how football, uniquely among the sports of that era, became what it is today - the people's game.
Reviews / Votes
Love it or hate it, football is one of the most successful institutions ever spawned in these islands. The sheer speed with which a random blend of mud, testosterone and Anglo-Saxon eccentricity evolved into a world game, not to mention a multi-billion-pound industry, still has the power to set the pulse racing. It is a story that has been told many times, but Richard Sanders not only retells it with scholarly zeal, but gives it a new slant... His book is as much a social history as a sporting history, and all the better for it... Beastly Fury can be warmly recommended to anyone curious about the origins of the modern game -- Max Davidson * Mail on Sunday * There is no shortage of football stories. It is one of the subtle triumphs of Richard Sanders's book that he brings another tale gently into the light. Beastly Fury is a bright, breezy account of the beginnings of football. Sanders kicks off with a rush and his pace rarely slackens but something of substance emerges. The author has a keen eye for the personal anecdote whether it be the eccentric goalkeeper or the club secretary who is consumed by ambition. But the significance of Beastly Fury is that it lays bare just how football was born, nurtured and grew on the back of class movements... succint but acute... engaging but quietly serious -- Hugh MacDonald * Glasgow Herald * Sanders's meticulous research is persuasive... [an] original thesis, written with style, wit and authority -- Simon Redfern * Independent on Sunday * Well written and thoughtful... extremely good indeed -- Rod Liddle * Sunday Times * Smooth, pacey prose... fascinating -- Alex Wade * Times Literary Supplement * A bold and vivid history of football's disparate founding fathers -- Peter Watts * Time Out * The football season hardly ends at all these days, but for literary (or at least literate) fans who miss it, there is Richard Sanders's Beastly Fury: The Strange Birth of British Football, which traces a game now bedevilled by preening, overpaid cheats back to a public-school culture of "egregious selfishness", and preening, unpaid cheats. Britain's peculiar relationship to professional sport is acutely analysed by Sanders, who asks the winningly unpatriotic question "if we invented football, how come we are so bad at it?", and finds the answer in our ignorance of foreign origins of the game, the cult of amateurishness, and a reluctance to accept the sport's (re-)democratization in the twentieth century. -- David Horspool * Times Literary Supplement * Both entertaining and informative, Beastly Fury is an impeccably researched book telling an enthralling story in an easily read fluent style * Colin Shindler, author of Manchester United Ruined My Life * Fascinating stuff * Football Punk * Shows that publishers continue to believe in a market for the thinking person's football book... a good historical read -- Matt Dickinson * The Times *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Transworld Publishers Ltd
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Illustrations
2x8pp
Dimensions
Height: 198 mm
Width: 127 mm
Thickness: 21 mm
Weight
397 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-553-81935-9 (9780553819359)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
12/2010
1st Edition
Transworld Digital
€12.99
Available for download
Person
Richard Sanders is a writer and award-winning documentary maker. He is the author of If A Pirate I Must Be: The True Story of Bartholomew Roberts, King of the Caribbean.