SHANKLY’S VILLAGE: FOOTBALL HISTORY IN THE MAKING

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13 Oct

SHANKLY’S VILLAGE: FOOTBALL HISTORY IN THE MAKING

As David ‘The Damned United’ Peace notes: “Shankly’s Village is not only an important book about a lost community, its football teams and its history, but in its rebirth with the Glenbuck Academy, a magnificent inspiration of what football could be and mean again… it has so many great stories… very moving and powerful scenes, and is really well written.”

Adam Powley & Robert Gillan’s book represents a major new addition to the written history of British football. Evocative of a lost time and place, Shankly’s Village tells the story of a tiny Scottish mining village that spawned more professional footballers per capita than any other community.

Every football fan with a sense of history will be intrigued by the legacy of the lost village – by ‘The Extraordinary Life and Times of Glenbuck and its Famous Sons’.

The most comprehensive, exhaustive, and fully researched study of Glenbuck, birthplace of Bill Shankly
Never-seen-before detail on Bill Shankly’s playing career and his life after leaving Liverpool
Exclusive in-depth interviews with Ian St John and Ian Callaghan, providing fresh and revealing insight into their relationships with Bill Shankly
The truth about the ‘football is more important than life and death’ quote
A sweeping portrait of football and social history across Britain, from the birth of the game to the modern day
The former mining village was home to over 50 professional footballers; per capita, the equivalent would be a small non-league club in London producing nearly 250,000 pros over a 40-year period
Unprecedented coverage on each Glenbuck footballer and the clubs they played for
Detailed chapters on FA-Cup and League-title winners, their remarkable careers and lives
Fascinating interviews with relatives, former villagers, eyewitnesses and experts on a whole range of clubs, stories, and related subjects
Packed with detail, stories, anecdotes and insight.

‘As somebody who cherished the friendship of my great fellow Ayrshireman Bill Shankly, I am delighted that the story of the remarkable mining village that produced him is being vividly told. Physically, Glenbuck has been expunged but its name will always have resonance for anyone interested in the importance of football to the working-class communities of what used to be Britain's industrial areas.’
– Hugh McIlvanney

Click here for more information, or to read a sample from Shankly’s Village: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Glenbuck and its Famous Sons.