1966 and Not All That is meant to be a serious book to be enjoyed. Not always an easy mix to achieve, so to that end we have purposely avoided the academic convention of footnotes, endnotes and bibliographies to allow the flow of reading chapters in whatever order the reader prefers. Instead, in this section books and other resources are listed in thematic groups so if an intellectual, or other, fancy has been tickled by what you read, the ideas and incidents covered can be followed up.
The best book to date (!) on 1966 is England’s Glory, written by Dave Hill for the thirtieth anniversary in “real-time” style. Roger Hutchinson’s 66! The Inside Story of England’s World Cup Triumph is the most detailed account of the team and their victorious campaign. David Thomson’s 4-2 is a brilliant elegy to all that 1966 came to represent for one fan. An Amber Glow by Peter Allen deals with much of the politics and organising of the tournament. The book 1966 Uncovered by photographer Peter Robinson and designer Doug Cheeseman magnificently creates a visual history of the 1966 World Cup. Dilwyn Porter’s essay “Egg and Chips with the Connellys: Remembering 1966,” published in the journal Sport in History, Volume 29, number 43, 2009, is a really good account of the social history of ’66. A counterfactual history of “What Happened Next” is provided by Kim Newman’s “The Germans Won” in the thirtieth-anniversary 1996 collection of writing, A Book of Two Halves, edited by Nicholas Royle. The real version, in terms of what happened to the England team, is recorded by Simon Hattenstone in his book The Best of Times, published for the fortieth anniversary in 2006.
Home tales from the ’66 squad are provided by two autobiographies, each published just a year after the tournament: Alan Ball’s Ball of Fire and Jack Charlton’s For Leeds and England. Geoff Hurst’s The World Game appeared a year later in 1968. Goals from Nowhere! by Martin Peters was published in 1970. Jeff Powell’s Bobby Moore: The Life and Times of a Sporting Hero was published shortly after Bobby Moore’s death as an unapologetic tribute volume. Jack and Bobby, by Leo McKinstry, is a superb biography of the World Cup-winning Charlton brothers, while Matt Dickinson’s The Man in Full seeks to uncover what it was that made Bobby Moore such a special player and England captain. Alan Tomlinson and Christopher Young’s chapter “Golden boys and golden memories: Fiction, ideology, and reality in Roy of the Rovers and the Death of the Hero” from the collection A Necessary Fantasy? The Heroic Figure in Children’s Popular Culture, edited by Dudley Jones and Tony Watkins, puts a lot of the myth-making contained in the idea of footballer as hero, fictional or non-fictional, into perspective.
For more on the playing side of the ’66 victory, both Dave Bowler’s biography of Alf Ramsey, Winning Isn’t Everything, and Leo McKinistry’s Sir Alf provide essential insights into how England did it. Jonathan Wilson’s The Anatomy of England analyses the evolution of England playing styles, before and after Ramsey, while Niall Edworthy’s The Second Most Important Job in the Country gives a wider perspective on the problems England managers have faced to build on the ’66 success. Tony Pawson’s The Football Managers, published in 1974, is a very ’70s view of football management. Jimmy Greaves took a while longer to go into print with his own view of Sir Alf and other England managers; his book, with Norman Giller, Don’t Shoot the Manager: The Revealing Story of England’s Soccer Bosses, was published in 1993. A more instant assessment of Ramsey’s achievement was “Sir Alfred Ramsey – The Man Who Must Win – and Did” by Brian James, in Lesley Frewin’s The Saturday Men: A Book of International Football, published in 1967.
The significance of ’66 culturally is explained by John Clarke and Chas Critcher’s chapter “1966 and all that: England’s World Cup victory,” in Off the Ball: The Football Word Cup, edited by Alan Tomlinson and Garry Whannel. And again by Chas Critcher, in his chapter “England and the World Cup: World Cup Willies, English Football and the Myth of 1966,” in the collection edited by John Sugden and Alan Tomlinson, Hosts and Champions: Soccer Cultures, National Identities and the USA World Cup. Two essays by sports historian Tony Mason further broaden an understanding of the historical significance of the tournament: “England 1966: Traditional and modern?” in National Identity and Global Sports Events: Culture, politics, and spectacle in the Olympics and the football World Cup, edited by Alan Tomlinson and Christopher Young; and “England 1966 and all that,” in Kay Schiller and Stefan Rinke’s edited collection, The FIFA World Cup 1930-2010: Politics, Commerce, Spectacle and Identities.
A number of films provide some kind of sense of where 1966 lies in English popular culture. The delightful Sixty-Six is the only one actually set in 1966. The Great Escape of course has nothing actually to do with football but has become emblematic of a certain version of Englishness that hopelessly mixes World War II with World Cup adventures. Escape to Victory served to perpetuate this very particular confusion; having Sylvester Stallone in goal didn’t help matters either. The comedy Mike Bassett: England Manager is gently self-mocking about England’s failings, perhaps marking that moment when we finally learned to laugh at ourselves. Arthur Aughey’s book The Politics of Englishness is also useful in helping us to navigate ways to link these popular-culture images of England with the dawning political reality that the Great Britain that England in ’66 was the dominant part of may no longer exist.
The experience of being a top-flight footballer, and member of England team, in the 1960s is recorded by Johnny Haynes in his autobiography from the period, It’s All in the Game. The essay by Martin Johnes and Gavin Mellor, “The 1953 FA Cup Final: Modernity and Tradition in British Culture,” covers the preceding decade, published in the journal Contemporary British History, Volume 20, Number 2, 2006. Ronald Kowalski and Dilwyn Porter covered the most seminal England game of that decade in their essay “England’s World Turned Upside Down? Magical Magyars and British Football,” published in the journal Sport in History, Vol 23, Number 2, 2003. Essays that use two different clubs to record the changes in post-war English football are: “Professional Football and local identity in the Golden Age: Portsmouth in the Mid-Twentieth Century” by Nick Phelps in Urban History, Vol 23, Number 2, 2005; and Matthew Taylor’s “Football, History and Memory, The Heroes of Manchester United,” published in Football Studies, Volume 3, Number 2, 2000. This period is also expertly described by Andrew Ward and John Williams in their book The Football Nation. John Williams covers the economic and social history of one club and its city in his biography of Liverpool FC, Red Men. Joyce Wooldridge describes how post-war footballers wrote about their own lives in her essay “The Sporting Lives: Footballers Autobiographies 1945-1980,” published in Sport in History, Vol 28, number 4, 2008. John Moynihan’s The Soccer Syndrome: From the Primeval Forties was published in 1966 and is a viewpoint on the game framed by the period. Hugh Mcllvanney’s McIlvanney on Football includes his writing from the period too. James Corbett’s England Expects is a comprehensive and very well written history of the England team that takes us from 1870 to 1966 before continuing on to World Cup 2006. Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski’s “Why England Lose” chapter in their book Soccernomics is the ultimate in empirical analysis, explaining England’s failings as a football team, before 1966 and ever-after.
For 1966 beyond football, Richard Weight’s Patriots: National Identity in Britain 1940-2000 is a magnificent social and cultural history of wartime and post-war Great Britain. Covering the period immediately prior to ’66, have a read of David Kynaston’s Modernity Britain: A Shake of the Dice 1959-62. Dominic Sandbrook’s two books Never Had it So Good, covering 1956–63, and White Heat, spanning 1964–70, neatly sandwich ’66. Jon Savage’s 1966: The Year The Decade Exploded explores the music of that year and its connection to art and fashion as well as increasingly radical politics. Ben Pimlott’s biography Harold Wilson is essential for understanding politics in and around 1966. In addition Arthur Marwick’s The Sixties: Social and Cultural Transformation in Britain, France, Italy and the United States, 1958–1974 gives a broader, more international picture of the period.
The troubled past of England away is carefully chronicled by Clifford Stott and Geoff Pearson in Football Hooliganism: Policing and the War on the English Disease, and again by Geoff Pearson in his book An Ethnography of English Football Fans. Bill Buford’s Among the Thugs is a hooliganism insider account from the late 1980s, including Italia ’90. On how race impacted on football, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s, The Changing Face of Football by Les Back, Tim Crabbe and John Solomos is very good. Edited by Daniel Burdsey, Race, Ethnicity and Football helps bring the analysis up to date. By the same editor, British Asians and Football is specifically about the relationship between the game and the under-representation of a community. For a broader survey of racism vs anti-racism in the 1960s and after, read Satnam Virdee’s Racism, Class and the Racialised Outsider. Carrie Dunn’s books Female Football Fans and Football and the FA Women’s Super League are excellent on the growth both of women fans and the women’s game. Follow her @carriesparkle. Edited by Jayne Caudwell, Women’s Football in the UK gives an idea on how far the women’s game has developed compared to when it was formally banned by the FA back in 1966. The Jimmy McGovern film Hillsborough is an incredibly moving portrait of the tragedy that was Hillsborough ’89. How fan culture changed in the late 1980s and early 1990’s is covered by Steve Redhead’s book Football with Attitude. Mark Peryman’s Ingerland: Travels with a Football Nation is the definitive account of the changing culture of England’s in the 1990s of the last century and into the 2000’s. The best England fan travel blog is Mark Raven’s www.englandbrighton.blogspot.co.uk.
Books about England’s World Cup campaigns, and others’ too, perhaps both cheer the English reader up a shade as well as put any failure in the context of the tournament as a whole. A recommended list of such books, not including ’66, would include Jeff Dawson’s Back Home about England at Mexico ’70. All Played Out by Pete Davies is regarded by many as the finest ever football book; it covers England’s Italia ’90 campaign, and the documentary film One Night in Turin is also based on the book. Don Watson’s Dancing in the Streets covers USA ’94 from the Irish fans’ point of view. Edited by Hugh Dauncey and Geoff Hare, France and the 1998 World Cup is a collection of academic essays reviewing the impact, nationally and globally of France ’98. No More Buddha Only Football is a superbly funny account of what it was like to follow England to World Cup 2002. Jamie Trecker’s Love & Blood is an American-eye view of World Cup 2006. Africa’s World Cup, edited by Peter Alegi and Chris Bolsmann, consists of an impressive range of critical viewpoints on the actuality of South Africa hosting World Cup 2010. American writer George Vecsey’s Eight World Cups covers tournaments 1982–2010, with an afterword on World Cup 2014. Part travelogue, part history, with a particular emphasis on the rise and rise of the USA team, this is a very good World Cup overview of an over thirty-two-year period from the point of view of someone who was there, throughout. To begin at the beginning go back to The Game of their Lives by Geoffrey Douglas, about the USA team who beat England at the 1950 World Cup. And for the long view therew’s none better than Brian Glanville’s The Story of the World Cup is updated to coincide with each World Cup; it remains the definitive history of the tournament as a whole. For the statistical breakdown of every game in every World Cup, visit www.planetworldcup.com.
David Downing’s The Best of Enemies is a history of the England vs Germany footballing rivalry. How England vs Germany fits into the world of football, and more particularly the media representation of it, is the subject of “Crossing the Line: The English Press and Anglo-German Football, 1954-1996,” Christoph Wagner’s PhD thesis, De Montfort University, Leicester. Raphael Honisgstein’s Englischer Fussball is a German view on the curious clash of football and the making of Englishness. By the same author, Das Reboot tells us how Germany recovered from what seemed to us the briefest of years of hurt to become World Champions, again. Uli Hesse’s Tor! is a superb history of German football. Lee Price’s The Bundesliga Blueprint and Ronald Reng’s Matchdays tell in their different ways the story of the German model. The best way of all however to appreciate Germany’s World Cup success story is to begin at the beginning, sit back and enjoy the film The Miracle of Bern, a fictionalised account of their first World Cup victory in 1954.
On Latin American football, the stories in The Football Crónicas edited by Jethro Soutar and Tim Girven include Mexico, Uruguay and Argentina. Andreas Camponar’s book Golazo! is a more conventional approach to the same subject concentrating on events on the pitch. The collection Football in the Americas, edited by Rory Miller and Liz Crolley, consists of academic essays explaining the social and cultural significance of football in the region. David Downing’s World Cups and other Small Wars deals specifically with the England vs Argentina football rivalry.
Gerry Hassan’s website www.gerryhassan.com is an excellent way to keep up with Scottish politics, culture and sometimes football. His book Caledonian Dreaming is a very good portrayal of what an independent Scotland would look like. Ian Black’s Tales of the Tartan Army tells the story of the Scotland fans who follow their national team. Graham McColl’s ’78: How Scotland Lost the World Cup is a brilliant account of perhaps the biggest Scottish World Cup misadventure. Richard Gordon’s Scotland ’74 does the same very well for the previous World Cup. Of several histories of the Scottish team, amongst the best are David Potter’s Wizards and Bravehearts and Archie McPherson’s Flower of Scotland.
For how two of England’s ’66 opponents have got on since, see first the late-twentieth-century rise and rise of the French national team, covered in the collection Le Foot, edited by Christov Rühn. And for Portuguese football, Phil Town is easily the best-informed English-language writer and an invaluable source of information; his website is www.footballportugal.com.pt and you can follow him on Twitter too @footballport. The documentary film The Game of Their Lives is a wonderful portrayal of both the North Korean team’s achievements at World Cup ’66 and the friendly reception they received in England wherever they played. This achievement is also carefully documented in Jong Sung Lee’s PhD thesis, “Football in North and South Korea c.1910-2002: Diffusion and Development,” from De Montfort University, Leicester.
Franklin Foer’s How Football Explains the World is a highly readable use of football as what the author describes as “an unlikely theory of globalisation.” David Goldblatt’s The Ball is Round is an essential global history of football. An earlier approach to the same subject is Bill Murray’s Football: A History of the World Game. David Held’s work is amongst the best for a more traditional way of explaining of globalisation; his book with Anthony McGrew, Globalization/Anti-Globalization, is a useful introduction to this key debate. Richard Giulianotti’s Football: A Sociology of the Global Game is the classic and easy-to-read introduction to what an -ology has to do with football. Jamie Cleland’s 2015 book A Sociology of Football in a Global Context is a more recent approach to the same subject.
For a daily round up of critical thinking on modern football follow Philosophy Football’s twitter feed @phil_football.
The best insights into the modern game are provided by the monthly magazine When Saturday Comes and the quarterly journal The Blizzard.
Two books that cover the marketisation of English football, especially following the formation of the Premier League, are David Conn’s Richer than God and David Goldblatt’s The Game of our Lives. Steve Redhead’s Postfandom and the Millennial Blues single-handedly introduced postmodernism to football. His latest book Football and Accelerated Culture: This Modern Sporting Life continues with the mission. Steve’s work can be followed at his website www.steveredhead.zone. For up-to-the-minute opinion on all things football follow @barneyronay and for the business side of the game follow @david_conn. To keep up-to-date with academic research on football and other sports follow @sport_research. Stuart Fuller’s The Football Tourist is the best introduction to combining travel with taking in a game, or three. The follow-up volume is titled, naturally The Football Tourist – The Second Half.
Efforts towards a manifesto for English football include Mark Perryman’s Fabian Society/When Saturday Comes version, Football Unite: New Labour, The Task Force and the Future of the Game from 1997 and by the same author for the Institute for Public Policy Research, Ingerland Expects: Football, National Identity and World Cup 2002. Most recently the 2015 Football Action Network Fan Manifesto at www.thefan.org.uk. For a grassroots coaching view of how to save English football from itself see Matthew White-house’s The Way Forward: Solutions to England’s Failings, while Chris Green addresses specifically the issue of youth football in Every Boy’s Dream. Punks, Pirates, Politics is Nick Davidson’s impassioned account of what St Pauli represents. Martin Cloake seeks to apply this spirit of resistance to the English game in Taking Our Ball Back. Will Simpson and Malcolm McMahon’s Freedom through Football takes such an ambition to anarchic limits via the story of the Easton Cowboys and Cowgirls football teams. There is plenty of very well-informed critical thinking and writing about football online, for amongst the best follow @gameofthepeople and @twoht. For a picture of the increasingly attractive alternative offered in non-league follow the match reports provided @ beautifulgame15 and the photo-essays of @centrecirclepub. For campaigning initiative and imagination www.footballbeyondborders.org set the standard. Seeking to provide an ideological overview for all this activity, and others too, isn’t easy but Fan Culture in European Football and the Influence of Left Wing Ideology edited by Peter and David Kennedy has a good go.
Football Worlds: A Lifetime in Sport by Stanley Rous is his own view of how international football should be administered. Alan Tomlinson’s FIFA: The Men, the Myths and the Money is a modern, and critical view. Denis Howell’s autobiography Made in Birmingham includes his experience as the British Government’s first Minister of Sport. Useful explanations of the connections between football and party politics are included in Football and the Commons People, edited by David Bull and Alastair Campbell.
Reading Arthur Hopcraft’s The Football Man, originally published in 1968, is a very good way to understand how the game was reported in the 1960s. Roger Domenghetti’s From The Back Room to the Front Room is a most useful history of how the media has covered football, mainly in the newspapers. Martin Kelner’s Sit Down and Cheer provides a history of football, and other sports, on TV.
Played in London by Simon Inglis gives readers an idea how the environment in which we watch and consume our sport has changed over the past fifty years. Visit the website www.played-inbritain.co.uk for other books in this excellent series. For further background read Rob Steen’s Floodlights and Touchlines, a comprehensive history of spectator sports and the spaces in which we watch them.
For an introduction to the work of Stuart Hall in the 1980s read The Hard Road to Renewal, Eric Hobsbawm’s writings in the same period are collected in his Politics for a Rational Left. Hobsbawm’s essay “The Apogee of Nationalism 1918-1950,” in his book Nations and Nationalism Since 1780 is a good introduction to how nationalism evolved in the first half of the twentieth century. Mark Perryman’s edited collections, Imagined Nation: England after Britain and Breaking up Britain: Four Nations after a Union, cover the implications of increasingly independent Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and the emergence of a distinctly Englidh national culture and polity on what used to be a United Kingdom (sic). David Winner’s Those Feet explores the very particular relationship between football and English national identity.
If that little lot isn’t enough, or maybe if it is way too much, there is really only way to relive and re-examine 1966. Watch Goal! The Official Film of the 1966 World Cup, England fan or not, for a truly great celebration of that golden summer of football.