Nicky Allt was a penniless teenager from the tough Kirkby district of Liverpool who wanted something more, when noone would employ him. In the late seventies that meant clothes, music and Liverpool FC. He joined a young scallywag crew who dressed different, spoke different and met at the Anfield Road End. Their travels would become legend as the Reds conquered Europe. The Road Enders were a bunch of blaggers and fighters to whom every No Entry sign was a challenge and every price tag a joke. They criss-crossed the continent, causing havoc in their wake - and had a whale of a time.
Gold Fever Awaydays is... The story of a crew within a crew, a football gang who saw beyond hooliganism, and wanted to make money at football away games in the UK and Europe with people they knew from the terraces they stood on evert Saturday, and those they had grown up with. Its impossible to live this way at the football nowadays, its why this story has been written.
To escape a brutal life on the Liverpool docks, a boy runs away to sea Arthur Fearon is nearly thirteen, and in the eyes of the law, that makes him a man. He wants to study to become a chemist, but his family cannot afford for him to continue school. The thought of a life working the docks makes Fearon break down in front of his classmates, but there is no time to cry. This boy has to get to work. The docks are hellish, and Fearon’s first day is his last. He hops a steamer to Alexandria, looking for a better life on the sea, but everywhere he goes, he finds cruelty, vice, and the crushing weight of adulthood. He will not be a man for long. The subject of an infamous 1930s obscenity trial, this is the original, unexpurgated text of James Hanley’s landmark novel: an unflinching examination of child labor and a timeless tale of adulthood gained too soon.
In the late 1970s, a small body of violent young trend-setters exploded out of England's north-west to bewilder, terrify, and eventually enlighten the rest of the country. Their novel hooligan style came to be known as the "casual" movement, with its wedge haircut and obsession with expensive designer clothing and training shoes, but the story of how its original perpetrators emerged from disparate beginnings has never yet been completely detailed. Ian Hough came of age at the epicentre of the explosion, in 1979 in north Manchester, where outsiders branded these unlikely-looking pretenders "Perry Boys", due to the Fred Perry polo shirts they wore with their narrow cords, "effeminate" hairstyles and Adidas Stan Smith trainers. Hough witnessed the sudden ramping up of an age-old rivalry between Manchester and Liverpool's Scallies, as the two cities' football hooligans realised each was a carbon copy of the other, and how they all in turn were embracing a form of organised violence, thievery, and thinking that was yet to see the light of day elsewhere in the UK. As the enlightened tribes of the north-west dug in for the long war, slashing each other with craft knives and engaging in battles involving thousands, the rest of Britain began to pick up the styles for themselves. He describes, in vivid and often humorous prose, how the Perry Boys waged a style-war on their lesser-evolved peers within Manchester, kick-starting a national fashion eruption whose tremors are still being felt today. The book moves confidently through the 80s underground, as the psychedelic fragments of what came to be termed the Rave scene gravitate from the council estates and football stadia of Manchester, into the nightclubs, where the jaded Perry Boys were waiting all along. Manchester's subsequent descent into rampant mayhem, in the form of gangsters, drug dealers, and music, now bathed in the strange purple glow of hallucinogenic drugs like Ecstasy, spawned the "Madchester" scene of modern urban legend. The sense of unreality and optimism which accompanied Manchester United's domestic and European successes later became inextricably dovetailed to the scene in the city, and Hough takes the reader on an intense trip through those heady times. Rounding the book off with the story of how this unlikely new style had proved contagious across the UK, and how its perpetrators proceeded to travel the globe in search of greener pastures, Hough describes the mass exodus of young people, many of whom exported the philosophy of the Perry mindset, grafting and simply travelling for its own sake, around the globe. This book is for anyone who is interested in how things began, whether it was football hooligan culture or the Rave mentality, as the world grew smaller. It is a testament to those who lead, and a mesmerising read for those who have followed.
Now also a new documentary film written and presented by Peter Hooton, The Boot Room Boys - BT Sport April 2022. The Boot Room story starts in 1959 when Bill Shankly arrived and converted a 12 x 12 storage room into a meeting place for him and his coaches, a move that had momentous consequences, both for the Club and British football. Fans on the Kop will remember the heart-stopping extra time of the 1965 FA Cup Final, and the jubilation of winning the treble in 1984. But what was the common thread during Liverpool's glory years? It was the Boot Room. Lifelong Liverpool supporter and editor of legendary fanzine The End, Peter Hooton takes us back into that old storage room, where first Shankly, then in succession Paisley, Fagan and Dalglish drank tea, analysed, strategised, selected and deselected, and built the most successful British club in Europe in the 20th Century. Illustrated throughout with over 100 powerful never-before-seen images from the Mirror's forgotten archives, The Boot Room Boys captures the story, as it unfolded, of Liverpool's conquering heroes.
'A fresh, original love story, beautifully told.' RUTH HOGAN, author of The Keeper of Lost Things After 50 years together Stan still adores his wife... so why is he dating again? Bonnie and Stan are soulmates. They met during the Swinging Sixties, to the soundtrack of The Beatles and the Merseybeat scene. Now they've grown up and grown old together, had children and grandchildren. They are finally building their dream home, when disaster strikes. Stan is running out of time, and can't bear the thought of leaving Bonnie alone. Alongside his teenage granddaughter Greya, he forms a plan to find Bonnie a new love of her life. And she must never find out... Bonnie & Stan is a poignant, surprising love story set during the Swinging Sixties and the present day. Ultimately feel-good and full of emotion, Bonnie & Stan will make your heart sing.
This book documents a youth culture that had a burgeoning start on the Football Terraces of Liverpool. Being a Season Ticket holder at Anfield in the late 1970s Dave is able to give a first hand account in the re-telling of the culture now known as Casuals. With quotes from fellow supporters, including Farm singer Peter Hooton and author Nicholas Allt, plus an intro from Head of adidas Global Marketing Gary Aspden, the adventurous tales of acquiring the latest trainers and coveted clothing is told in chronological order, from the earliest days of desiring the latest designer jeans from a local market before anyone else, to travelling abroad to get a pair of adidas trimm-trab trainers unavailable and too expensive for the UK market. The book looks at the European experience, a 'rite of passage' for many Liverpool teenagers in the days when Liverpool F.C. were the dominant force in European football. The look defined a Generation and has influenced the High Street to the extent that Sportswear and Trainers are sold in almost every Clothing Store. Sportwear has become Leisurewear for everyday use.
Combines lyrical prose and illustrations in an introduction to The Beatles, history's best-selling band, that details their ordinary childhoods and musical inspirations amid a backdrop of postwar England.
