Promised Land: A Northern Love Story [Paperback]

This book is stunning: more than a piece of sports journalism, it is an intense psychological examination of a city with a turbulent life story, an enduring image (not always complimentary) to outsiders, and a fierce and passionate character which burns to this day.

Taking as his central motif the sign which was once on display high and proud at Leeds train station declaring 'Leeds - The Promised Land Delivered', Clavane examines that very character, telling an epic saga which weaves together the story of the football club, of the city, and of the Jewish community in which he himself grew up.

His reflections are searingly honest. Famous vignettes from the seminal New Wave film 'Billy Liar' (originally written by Leeds-born Keith Waterhouse) are recurring scene-setters, which Clavane builds upon to charactise the city as an historically ambitious place where idealistic dreamers have come to achieve: Hull-born architect Cuthbert Brodrick who built the majestic Town Hall; and of course Don Revie, the man who took over as Leeds United manager in the sixties, ordering his team to play in an all-white strip like that of world-class Real Madrid.

Yet that ambition, that apparent self-confidence Clavane suggests betrays a rather more deep-seated insecurity about ourselves: that no matter what pretentions we might ever adopt towards worldwide greatness, we will never lose our abiding provincial roots.

A book which gives every Leeds lad or lady a great deal to think about. It is at once a nostalgic tread through footballing history; a treatise on sport and culture; and a fascinating treasure chest of stories - mostly now forgotten and little-told - about a city and a football club which continues to have its "ups and downs".

Clavane's love for Leeds, his tough love, is always there. Sure, it's not just about football, or football in context: the book is about tribes from the point of view of an active member, with sharply focused looks at particular tribal attitudes. It is properly biased in favour of `community cohesion' (a pair of words widely used but seldom fully understood in the world of education) and against those who seek to wreck it, like the oddly-named Service Crew, the notorious gang of Leeds hooligans which brawled its racist and xenophobic way across the country a quarter of a century ago. Clavane would endorse the words of Nelson Mandela, who said, "Sport has the power to change the world, the power to inspire, the power to unite people in a way that little else can....it breaks down racial barriers...it laughs in the face of all discrimination."

The book is awash with background information and interesting well-I-never-knew-that details, in addition to predictable coverage of the notable LUFC bosses of the past few decades. There is plenty on Don Revie, for example, to supplement what can be found in David Peace's The Damned United, or rather to put a few things straight. Clavane goes over well-known facts, adds a few more and exposes some false legends. There is also a fair amount on the half-forgotten Albert Johanneson, one of the first great black players in English football, who really needs a good biography written about him, and his fellow South African Lucas Radebe, he of the Kaizer Chiefs, the boy from Soweto who became one of the Premier League's finest defenders and whose memory is still revered in Leeds.

One of the really significant aspects of Promised Land is the series of connections made with the literature which has come out of the city and its environs - Billy Liar for example, or Tony Harrison's poem V. There are also references to sociological works like the well-worn Uses of Literacy and Nick Davies's more lurid The Dark Heart, which describes how the street children, beggars, muggers and joy riders of Leeds all come creeping out at night, and to books on architecture. I get the feeling that Clavane could write an excellent illustrated guide to local architecture. So the book is not just for a run-of-the-mill fan who might put down the Daily Mirror and pick up a book (picture it) on the coach to a match.

It's fluent and engaging, with a heart worn on the sleeve, which puts it on a different level to some other books about sport, free of jargon and automaton journalism and more than accessible to people who have a flimsy knowledge of soccer. People who have never been to Leeds in their lives would enjoy it as well!

This book is an absolute gem. It takes the reader on a journey through the connected history of the city of Leeds and its football club. In general, there is very little written about the urban history of Leeds and its communities, probably because the city is so relatively young in comparison with its neighbour, York. However, this book does the job, accounting life in the industrial age. It's highly relevant to me, as it's where I'm from, but friends who are not from Leeds and support other clubs have enjoyed it too. Whether you like football or not, if you're interested in the urban social history of northern England, this is a book for you.