John Crace. Harry's Games: Inside the Mind of Football Managers

Event information

Writer and Guardian journalist John Crace takes a sideways look at the different styles of football management. Crace who writes the Digested Reads – pastiches of popular writers – for the paper draws on a lifetime of watching football and supporting Tottenham Hotspur to delve into the mind of the football manager. He is also the author of two sports books Harry's Games: Inside the Mind of Harry Redknapp and Vertigo: One Football Fan's Fear of Success. Harry's Games is the biography of Queen's Park Rangers and former Tottenham Portsmouth and Southampton manager Harry Redknapp. Seen as a tactical genius in some quarters and as a clown in others Crace asks how he could at one time be tipped as an England manager while at the same time be facing court proceedings for tax evasion charges he was eventually cleared of. Vertigo is an hilarious take on the life of an obsessive football fan whose team always disappoints. Crace has supported Spurs for 40 years mostly of underachievement. The recent upturn in fortunes has however led to a new anxiety: the fear of success.Crace is a feature writer for the Guardian who is best known for his literary pastiches the Digested Read. He makes two other appearances at the festival to discuss parody in literature with D J Taylor and to discuss the changing attitudes to sex and marriage in literature with Professor John Sutherland.