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Mid-century men
254 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 1982
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
August 10, 2022
* Struggled with this one. The only reason I didn’t give up on it (apart from the stupid rule the you don’t, do you?) is a sense of obligation to the man who wrote such a good book on football linked to an expectation that someone with his writer credits can’t have written as dull a book as this.
* One plot line deals with T Dan Smith and John Poulson types in corrupt local government. It does it badly. If you want it done well see Our Friends in the North.
* Another plot line deals with corruption in the police force in the 70s. It does it badly. If you want it done well see the Red Riding novels of David Peace.
* Hopcraft understood football and he patently doesn’t have more than a journalist’s working knowledge of his big themes.
* And his attempts to capture the up-to-the-minuteness of the times resulted in his painting a picture of the period through many of its most ephemeral details and figures of speech.
* I was involved in Labour Party politics and the workings at constituency level during this period. It wasn’t anything like it is portrayed in this book.... and nobody spoke like that at all.... strange that the dialogue is so poor. My memory tells me that it was pretty sharp in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. (Maybe he should have got John le Carré to have done a first draft for him).
* One plot line deals with T Dan Smith and John Poulson types in corrupt local government. It does it badly. If you want it done well see Our Friends in the North.
* Another plot line deals with corruption in the police force in the 70s. It does it badly. If you want it done well see the Red Riding novels of David Peace.
* Hopcraft understood football and he patently doesn’t have more than a journalist’s working knowledge of his big themes.
* And his attempts to capture the up-to-the-minuteness of the times resulted in his painting a picture of the period through many of its most ephemeral details and figures of speech.
* I was involved in Labour Party politics and the workings at constituency level during this period. It wasn’t anything like it is portrayed in this book.... and nobody spoke like that at all.... strange that the dialogue is so poor. My memory tells me that it was pretty sharp in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. (Maybe he should have got John le Carré to have done a first draft for him).
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review