Martin Knight: 13 books

A couple of years ago, Martin Knight began a quest to delve into his family history. He had a head start on many amateur genealogists, as 30 years earlier he had produced a school project on the very subject. The project was based on the papers and oral history of his then elderly grandmother, Ellen...

In genteel Epsom, Surrey in the summer of 1919 a score of semi-rural police officers fought a rioting mob of 400 Canadian soldiers in a battle of Rorke's Drift proportions. At the end of it the dependable Station Sergeant Thomas Green lay dead, bludgeoned by a bar torn from the police cells.Green is...

Hoolifan is the story of one man, Martin King, and his experiences spanning three decades with the country's foremost soccer gang. Chelsea have always been at the cutting edge of football violence, and King himself was at the heart of the evolving Chelsea mob for some 30 years. From his first visit...

Football has reinvented itself. As television money has poured into the game, the traditional working-class fans have poured out - not by choice, but by economic necessity. According to those in charge of the game the football hooligan has at last been eliminated from the landscape. But how true is...

Grass is the incredible story of Phil Sparrowhawk, a working-class boy with gambling in his blood. Like most punters, he enjoyed an incredible run of luck, but finally rolled the dice once too often. Before he had come of age, Phil had accumulated a small fortune from street trading. He then...

Everyone is familiar with the gypsy race but few outside their close-knit and ancient community really know what being a gypsy is about -how they live and how they think. This is the story of a gypsy man, Jimmy Stockin, born into a world where fighting is first nature. Whilst football maybe the chosen...

In a 16-year career spent with Chelsea and Southampton, goal-scoring legend Peter Osgood made 560 appearances, scoring 220 goals and winning two FA Cup-winner's medals. He was part of the victorious Chelsea side that defeated the mighty Real Madrid in the 1971 European Cup-Winners Cup final and is...

This is a Chelsea book with a difference. Based on the choices of thousands of supporters who have followed the club through the bad as well as the good times, and compiled by people raised in The Shed, The Special Ones presents a view of Chelsea unavailable elsewhere. There are no outsiders involved....

Gypsy Joe is not only a story of redemption, but an uplifting account of a young gypsy determined to realize his dream. Joe Smith tells of his formative years travelling the country in a caravan and how he encountered crushing prejudice when his extraordinary talents as a golf boy prodigy became apparent.Disillusioned,...

The Bay City Rollers were one of the brightest things to happen in the tumultuous 1970s, illuminating a dark decade marred by falling stock markets, a plummeting economy and industrial unrest. Alan Longmuir, an apprentice plumber from Edinburgh, was inspired by the Beatles to form a band. After enlisting...

Barry Desmond is a wanker. Masturbation has formed the unwelcome backdrop to his life; from his early teens when he was tortured by the belief he was the only one of his peer group doing this thing to himself to the current day when he thinks he must be the only man over 50 still doing it. Barry was...

SOMETIMES THE JOURNEY IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE DESTINATION. A stone from the stars rips a royal family apart, in a new tale from the banished lands. Weary hero Cam rides to the aid of his dying king, bearing the elixir that may save him. A party of reluctant adventurers pursues a troll across...

Lassie is Joe's prize collie and constant companion. But when Joe's father loses his job, Lassie must be sold. Three times she escapes from her new owner, and three times she returns home to Joe, until finally she is taken to the remotest part of Scotland—too far a journey for any dog to make alone. But...