Books by Jon Berry

The life and times of the last man hanged in Birmingham

Qatar's successful bid for the World Cup shocked the football world. How could such a place stage football's premier tournament? Armchair Guide gets underneath the noise, taking a sideways look at everything from human rights to the cost of a pint at the game.

It's an embarrassing truth for many football fans that it was only when professional football was eventually forced to close down that we recognised Covid-19 as a genuine threat to our way of life. Maybe just as shameful was the fact that once lockdown became normalised, it didn't take long for chatter to start about when the game might begin again. This book begins by charting what happened in the weeks leading up to that point, placing football in the context of furloughs, some new-found community awareness and dithering politicians. At the heart of the book are seven case studies of teams. From Burnley in the Premier League, down through the divisions to grassroots football, Project Restart looks at the hopes and fears of supporters and the actions of those charged with keeping their beloved clubs afloat. It looks at how we almost adjusted to the eerie echo of games on TV with no crowds and finishes by trying to address the biggest question in town: what will football look like in a post-Covid future?

You had one bath a week whether you needed it or not. You knew with iron certainty what was for tea on any given day of the week. There was every possibility that grown-ups, known to you or not, might clout you.But being a child of the 1950s endowed you with privileges that could only have been dreamt of by previous generations. Free secondary education and health services and, for a while, a booming economy and full employment not that you knew much about that as a kid.Did the baby-boomers, the beneficiaries of all of this, build a better world on the back of their advantages? Did they turn out to be progressive or just self-satisfied and selfish?In this series of essays that range from politics to education to sport and bits of silliness, a boomer paints the world. You can judge if its a pretty picture.