I'll say this for C.S.Lewis: he knew how to coin a memorable book title. The Screwtape Letters. Surprised By Joy. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe... but my personal favourite was Till We Have Faces, the title of a short novel about the battle between sacred love and profane. ... Read More...
About Author Profile: James Hamilton
On a wet afternoon in June 1909, Tottenham Hotspur played Everton in front of 8,000 spectators. One of the Spurs players on show was Walter Tull. He was black, and the abuse he'd suffered from hostile audiences had appalled the British press, but today he would score one of his ... Read More...
Bobby Charlton's at the airport, and out in the night somewhere my father's car combs the wet roads. I've slid my body into the back seat footwell and I'm shaking and sobbing with homesickness: at the airport, Bobby Charlton is dressed in a suit and tie and smoking. There's a ... Read More...
In our occasional feature we invite guests to select the six cultural links that might sustain them if, by some mischance, they were forced to spend eternity in a succession of airport departure lounges with only an iPad or similar device for company. Today's voyager is James Hamilton, a freelance writer ... Read More...
Following his look at violence on and off the Edwardian football pitch, James Hamilton now looks back to at two remarkable figures of the Victorian era of soccer... It’s impossible to scan any list of Victorian and Edwardian footballer’s deaths – like this one... - James Dunlop, St Mirren -- 1892 (tetanus from ... Read More...
Following his look at Edwardian football hooligans, James Hamilton continues his latest Row Z series on the reality of vintage soccer by turning to the violence and bad behaviour on the pitch... Two things get in the way of many otherwise decent attempts to write football history. Cloying nostalgia, that polyfillas ... Read More...
Having recently demolished some of the most popular football myths, James Hamilton begins another three-part series for our Row Z feature, this time looking at death and violence in Victorian and Edwardian football. The first part reveals that football fan violence was far from an invention of the Thatcher years... It’s ... Read More...
James Hamilton continues his 'The Football Fan Delusion' mini-series by recalling the 'Golden Age' of the 1970s with rather less fondness than the average English football fan... Even in football, there’s almost always been a golden age. In 1919 the FA Committee – mourning the Great War deaths of sons and ... Read More...
James Hamilton continues his 'The Football Fan Delusion' series by exposing the working class myth of Professionalism... Most of the current fan myths about British football are of fairly recent origin, but versions of this one have been circulating since the Edwardian era: that the coming of professionalism marked a terrific ... Read More...
In a special mini-series which we're calling 'The Football Fan Delusion', sports psychologist and blogger James Hamilton challenges some of soccer's most popular assumptions. This week he tackles the English myth of Passion and Commitment... I’m not sure when or where I first heard the phrase “passion and commitment.” Sometime after ... Read More...
