Fortune's Always Hiding: From Stratford to Seville

by Paul Brand

A football season ticket is one hell of a commitment! It's okay if you're guaranteed a good time - sexy football and three points a la Manchester City - but supporting a club of West Ham's stature is a marriage of convenience. In Fortune's Always Hiding , Paul Brand takes us through the Hammers' recent history, with a fan's-eye view that reads like 'The Secret Diary of a West Ham Fan Aged 403/4'. Chronicling a turbulent few years, from the final days at Upton Park to a European semi-final, this captivating account will resonate with anyone whose happiness is unwisely invested in the fortunes of their favourite team. Taking in fit and proper owners, the Leicester fairy tale, VAR, corporate greed, Covid lockdowns and the Three Lions renaissance (which has similarly teased success without delivering), this book is a must for Hammers devotees and anyone else who finds themselves disillusioned with the modern game but in too deep to ever give it up.

352 pages, Hardcover

Published April 1, 2023

About the author

Paul Brand is Professor of English Legal History at the University of Oxford and a Senior Research Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. He works on English medieval legal history and has written monographs on The origins of the English legal profession (1992) and on Kings, Barons and Justices: The Making and Enforcement of Legislation in Thirteenth-Century England (2003) as well as editing four volumes of The Earliest English Law Reports and the two earliest volumes of The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England.

For the Missionary and pain researcher, see Dr. Paul W. Brand, not to be confused with the Dutch children's lung specialist Paul Brand