Anyone But England
Anyone But England

Author: Mike Marqusee

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2020-07-01

Total Pages: 428

ISBN-13: 1789606993

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Anyone But England is a timely and entertaining exploration of the bonds which the English cricket to the English nation as both face apparently inexorable decline. Mike Marqusee, an American who has lived in England for twenty years, turns the amused gaze of an outsider on to the idiosyncrasies of the English at play, delving into the interminable wrangles over coloured clothing, covered pitches and commercial sponsorship. Yet Marqusee also displays the knowledgeability and passion of a dedicated cricket follower who has watched matches on four continents. His elegant and concise accounts of the origins of the game, its romance with the British Empire, and its traumatic adjustment to the modern market lift the lid on the paradoxes and hypocrisies that have made cricket what it is: democratic and elitist, national and international, ancient and modern. In a revealing scrutiny of the long saga of South Africa's exclusion from world cricket, Marqusee charts England's collusion with apartheid. Spectacularly failing the Tebbit test on every point, his eye-opening account of Pakistan's controversial 'ball-tampering' tour of England will provoke intense debate amongst cricket fans about the role of both the media and racism in the modern game. From the phoney war over the omission of Gower from the England side to England's women cricketers receiving the World Cup outside the Lord's pavilion from which they are banned, Anyone But England goes where no cricket book has gone before. In so doing it sheds new light not only on cricket but also on what it means to be part of a nation for whom the game is well and truly up.

Anyone but England
Anyone but England

Author: Mike Marqusee

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2016-12-15

Total Pages: 495

ISBN-13: 1448216699

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WINNER OF THE LORD ABERDARE LITERARY PRIZE, 1994 SHORTLISTED FOR THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD, 1994 Now with a new introduction by Rahul Bhattacharya, Anyone But England is a detailed exploration into the origins of cricket; the romance, cultural identity, hypocrisy, flaws of governance and glory of the game. Mike Marqusee, an American who fell in love with cricket when he moved to the UK in the 1970s, looks at the history of elitism and empire, and how race and class have always been issues in the game. Scrutinising the long saga of South Africa's exclusion from world cricket, Marqusee charts England's collusion with apartheid, and also details an eye-opening account of Pakistan's controversial 'ball-tampering' tour of England, which provoked intense debate amongst cricket fans about the role of both the media and racism in the modern game. Showing that supporting the game does not mean you need be blind to its flaws, Marqusee's passion and enthusiasm for cricket is threaded through every element of Anyone But England.

Anyone But England
Anyone But England

Author: Mike Marqusee

Publisher: White Lion Publishing

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781845130848

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Mike Marqusee is that exceedingly rare animal: an American who likes cricket - indeed, is obsessed with it, like all true devotees of the game. But coming from a country which didn't invent the game, didn't have an empire and doesn't expect by divine right to be the best in the world at it, gives his perspective on the English game a real originality. Anyone But England stands alongside Beyond a Boundary and Derek Birley's classics, A Social History of English Cricket and The Willow Wand (both published by Aurum) as one of the few indispensable anatomies of the game. It looks at such controversial - even unpalatable - aspects of cricket as racism, fair play and cheating, the place of tradition, the power of the blue-blazered establishment, and why for so long the England team were so bad. On first publication by Verso Marquesee's book attracted an enormous amount of coverage and was condemned by as many died-in-the-wool cricket commentators as it was praised for its freshness and iconoclasm by the more progressively-minded. This new edition includes a new chapter bringing his portrait of the game up to date.

England, England
England, England

Author: Julian Barnes

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2009-01-21

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 030755595X

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BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST • From the internationally acclaimed bestselling author The Sense of an Ending comes a "wickedly funny” novel (The New York Times) about an idyllic land of make-believe in England that gets horribly and hilariously out of hand. Imagine an England where all the pubs are quaint, where the Windsors behave themselves (mostly), where the cliffs of Dover are actually white, and where Robin Hood and his merry men really are merry. This is precisely what visionary tycoon, Sir Jack Pitman, seeks to accomplish on the Isle of Wight, a "destination" where tourists can find replicas of Big Ben (half size), Princess Di's grave, and even Harrod's (conveniently located inside the tower of London). Martha Cochrane, hired as one of Sir Jack's resident "no-people," ably assists him in realizing his dream. But when things go awry, Martha develops her own vision of the perfect England. Julian Barnes delights us with a novel that is at once a philosophical inquiry, a burst of mischief, and a moving elegy about authenticity and nationality.

I Never Knew That About England
I Never Knew That About England

Author: Christopher Winn

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2012-03-31

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 1448146062

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The inspiration for the primetime ITV series on Great Britain, this is the ultimate journey around England. Christopher Winn takes us to each county, to see where history happened, where people and ideas were born, where dreams took flight and where men and women now rest from their labours. To tread in their footsteps, to touch and experience some of what inspired and moved them is to capture some of the flavour of their lives and make their stories alive and real. Crammed with facts and information, I Never Knew That About England celebrates the places and people that make the country unique and includes history, legends, firsts, supremes, unusuals, inventions, birthplaces and gossip. You'll be able to visit the bridge where Pooh and Piglet played Poohsticks and see where Alfred burnt the cakes. In a small village in Bedfordshire you can visit the graveyard where Long John Silver and Wendy rest. These stories will bring any place that you visit to life (keep one copy in the car and one in the house!) and enable you to discover the rich and surprising history of England.

Think of England
Think of England

Author: Alice Elliott Dark

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2003-05-06

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 0743234979

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N rural eastern Pennsylvania, nine-year-old Jane MacLeod is writing a book about the happy family she desperately wishes she had. Her mother, Via, is dissatisfied and petulant, always resentful of the time Jane's father, Emlin, a heart surgeon, must spend with his patients at the hospital. One night in 1964, the family (including Jane's two younger brothers and sister and Via's homosexual brother, Uncle Francis) gathers to watch the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. All goes well until Emlin discovers that someone has taken the phone off the hook, so that he can't receive emergency calls. Angrily, he accuses Via (who accuses Jane) and rushes off to the hospital. He is killed in an automobile accident. Fifteen years later, Jane has moved to London, where she's become friends with bohemians Nigel and Colette. A political bombing and an affair with aloof (and married) American writer Clay West lead Jane to confront her long-buried guilt over her parents' unhappiness and father's death.

Jane Austen's England
Jane Austen's England

Author: Roy Adkins

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2013-08-15

Total Pages: 466

ISBN-13: 1101622865

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An authoritative account of everyday life in Regency England, the backdrop of Austen’s beloved novels, from the authors of the forthcoming Gibraltar: The Greatest Siege in British History (March 2018) Jane Austen, arguably the greatest novelist of the English language, wrote brilliantly about the gentry and aristocracy of two centuries ago in her accounts of young women looking for love. Jane Austen’s England explores the customs and culture of the real England of her everyday existence depicted in her classic novels as well as those by Byron, Keats, and Shelley. Drawing upon a rich array of contemporary sources, including many previously unpublished manuscripts, diaries, and personal letters, Roy and Lesley Adkins vividly portray the daily lives of ordinary people, discussing topics as diverse as birth, marriage, religion, sexual practices, hygiene, highwaymen, and superstitions. From chores like fetching water to healing with medicinal leeches, from selling wives in the marketplace to buying smuggled gin, from the hardships faced by young boys and girls in the mines to the familiar sight of corpses swinging on gibbets, Jane Austen’s England offers an authoritative and gripping account that is sometimes humorous, often shocking, but always entertaining.

The Anatomy of England
The Anatomy of England

Author: Jonathan Wilson

Publisher: Hachette UK

Published: 2010-05-20

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 1409113647

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'MASTERFUL' TimeOut 'GREAT' Financial Times 'ABSORBING' FourFourTwo 'THOUGHT-PROVOKING' Independent on Sunday 'ENTERTAINING' When Saturday Comes Having invented the game, everything that has followed for England and its national football team has been something of an anti-climax. There was, of course, the golden summer of 1966, and the great period of English dominance on the world stage, which fell roughly between 1886 and 1900, when England won 35 of their 40 international fixtures. But before long foreign teams, with their insistence on progressive 'tactics', began to pose a few questions. And much of what followed for England constituted a series of false dawns... In THE ANATOMY OF ENGLAND, Jonathan Wilson seeks to place the bright spots in context. Taking ten key England fixtures, Wilson explores how what actually happened on the pitch shaped the future of the English game. Bursting with insight and critical detail, yet imbued with a wry affection, this is a history of England like none before.

A Short History of England
A Short History of England

Author: Simon Jenkins

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Published: 2011-11-22

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 1610391438

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The heroes and villains, triumphs and disasters of English history are instantly familiar -- from the Norman Conquest to Henry VIII, Queen Victoria to the two World Wars. But to understand their full significance we need to know the whole story. A Short History of England sheds new light on all the key individuals and events in English history by bringing them together in an enlightening account of the country's birth, rise to global prominence, and then partial eclipse. Written with flair and authority by Guardian columnist and London Times former editor Simon Jenkins, this is the definitive narrative of how today's England came to be. Concise but comprehensive, with more than a hundred color illustrations, this beautiful single-volume history will be the standard work for years to come.

The Shortest History of England: Empire and Division from the Anglo-Saxons to Brexit - A Retelling for Our Times (Shortest History)
The Shortest History of England: Empire and Division from the Anglo-Saxons to Brexit - A Retelling for Our Times (Shortest History)

Author: James Hawes

Publisher: The Experiment, LLC

Published: 2022-03-15

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 1615198156

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How the most powerful country in the UK was forged by invasion and conquest, and is fractured by its north-south divide. The Shortest History books deliver thousands of years of history in one riveting, fast-paced read. England—begetter of parliaments and globe-spanning empires, star of beloved period dramas, and home of the House of Windsor—is not quite the stalwart island fortress that many of us imagine. Riven by an ancient fault line that predates even the Romans, its fate has ever been bound up with that of its neighbors; and for the past millennia, it has harbored a class system like nowhere else on Earth. This bracing tour of the most powerful country in the United Kingdom reveals an England repeatedly invaded and constantly reinvented—yet always fractured by its very own Mason-Dixon Line. It carries us swiftly through centuries of conflict between Crown and Parliament (starring the Magna Carta), America’s War of Independence, the rise and fall of empire, two World Wars, and England’s break from the EU. We discover: why the American colonists of 1776 believed that they were the true Anglo-Saxons how the British Empire was undermined from within why Winston Churchill said the UK could only be saved by splitting up England itself and how populism spawned Brexit and its “new elite.” The Shortest History of England brings all this and more to prescient life—offering the most direct, compelling route to understanding the country behind today’s headlines.