Frank Keating

On the beach | 28 July 2007

A column’s seasonal staple: what to read on the beach this summer?

issue 28 July 2007

A column’s seasonal staple: what to read on the beach this summer?

A column’s seasonal staple: what to read on the beach this summer? Usual form is a rave notice, in matey holiday spirit, for any new book by an old friend. I plead guilty as charged. But this one’s still a terrific book. Be aware, mind you, as you loll in the sun that the Premiership football season will be in full spate by the time you’re home. The crazy carnival of kick whirrs into life again just two Saturdays hence. Not that it’s really been away, what with the transfer market’s monstrous money-changing all summer as well as the latest Beckham saga in California overwhelming the public prints with more contrived hot air than even that engendered by Master Potter’s lit launch.

It is only a matter of weeks, too, till the England football XI continues its confused and stuttering attempts to qualify for the 2008 European championships, so easily the most apt holiday read for football obsessives looking to limber up for impending tribulations is the 300-page impeachment by the game’s veteran sage, Brian Glanville, who turns beady eye, spikey quill and exasperated despair on the flawed and mostly hapless band of fellows responsible for guiding over the last half-century successive underachieving (and nearly always extremely boring) England teams.

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