A pleasure to kick off festival fever
This weekend I appeared at the opening night of the Festival of Football Ideas to talk about my new crime novel Chasing the Game.
The two-week event, held at the enchanting Bristol Planetarium (pictured) on the eve of the 2014 World Cup, is a celebration of how literature, art, film, music and comedy can connect with football.
My talk, within a section called ‘Altering the narrative’, was titled ‘Chasing the Game – A Creative Twist on the Theft of the Jules Rimet Trophy’.
I spoke about how I used aspects of the real-life theft of the Jules Rimet (World Cup) Trophy in London in 1966 and combined them with fictional elements to create Chasing the Game, a dramatic and gripping depiction of this famous crime that remains unsolved to this day.
The Festival, running each night until Saturday 14 June, will feature further talks and performances from artists, writers, poets, academics, musicians and comedians. Full details of all the exciting events are available at the Festival’s website here.
The Festival is a not-for-profit event created and run by a group of volunteers for the love of football and art.
During my talk I also spoke about football’s link with literature in general, particularly books that have been bold enough to try and use football as a theme within a fictional narrative. The novels/novellas I discussed were:
The Damned United, by David Peace (2006)
Red or Dead, by David Peace (2013)
The Arsenal Stadium Mystery, by Leonard R Gribble (1939)
The Thistle and the Grail, by Robin Jenkins (1954)
Shoot on Sight, by Michael Hardcastle (1967)
Goalkeepers Are Different, by Brian Glanville (1972)
How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won The FA Cup, by JL Carr (1975)
A Book of Two Halves, edited by Nicholas Royle (1996)
Perfect Pitch series, edited by Simon Kuper (1997-99)
For Whom the Ball Rolls, by Ian Plenderleith (2001)
Heartland, by Anthony Cartwright (2009)
A review of my appearance on the Festival of Football Ideas official blog can be found here.
Chasing the Game is available now and can be ordered from the publisher Matador here, or on Amazon (paperback version) or ebook (just £1.99).