Football Factory / Headhunters / England Away - John King

I have not read all three books mentioned in this category, but 'The Football Factory' alone is definitely one of the best accounts I have read that deals with the subject of football hooliganism, and therefore one of the most compelling yet disturbing books I have come across. I found it very hard to put my thoughts down in any sort of coherent manner when it came to writing a review of ‘The Football Factory’, probably because a lot of what is described felt very close to home indeed. Now, by that I do not mean that I consider myself to be a football hooligan, or that I can claim to feel any sort of empathy with the events described in this ...  Read the complete review

I'll be blunt: I hated this book. Not because of the racist language, the sexism or the violence, I'm even willing to excuse the c**p writing. No, what makes this book so objectionable is the crass use of stereotypes. You want cartoon cut-out characters then here, take your pick: the lefty woman in the dole office who regards every white working class man with short hair and a flight jacket as a Nazi; or the white working class bloke in the dole office who suspects the woman of being a Trot and is himself sympathetic to the Nazis in C18; or is it the upper middle class woman who gets laid by Tom (the central character in the book) and who, being upper class, reveals ...  Read the complete review

John King, The Football Factory Trilogy Someone in the Guardian (Mark Stein, I think) once pointed out in a review of an earthy film that the French have a useful concept known as *nostalgie de la boue*. The Oxford English Dictionary translates it as “a yearning for mud”. Slumming it. Rough trade. In an artistic sense. The concept seems to apply to John King's books too: football hooliganism and shagging. The Football Factory kicked it off. A working-class lad whose name escaped me - if it's mentioned, I missed it, because I rapidly got bored with the book and stopped reading properly - narrates episodes from his life as a Chelsea fan. ...  Read the complete review

I bought these books separately, as they were written, I found myself scanning bookshops desperately waiting for England Away to be published. Bearing that in mind I've chosen to look at them individually. This book, and its follow ups, are well worth the money. The Football Factory, on the surface, deals mainly with violence on tour through the UK. The main protagonist is Tom Johnson, a Chelsea Headhunter in his late 20's, who sees it as his duty to crack the heads of his counterparts. The opening line is "Coventry are F**K all." . And so the book proceeds. King neither glamorises nor demonifies the excesses of his characters, ...  Read the complete review

NOTE - of the three books in this category, i am reviewing "England Away" - the thrid one. It does not soil the other two books to read this review. The trilogy is only very loosely linked. "England Away" is the third book in a loose trilogy by John King. The theme which runs through all three is football violence but it is perhaps "England Away" that has the most diverse themes and I would say that it is the obvious stand alone novel of the three as it is the one in which King demonstrates his skills as a writer,using strong characterisation and showing he is not just a one subject writer. "England ...  Read the complete review