Jungle Days: Supporting Celtic in the 1980s by John Wight (£18.99, Pitch Publishing)
John Wight describes Celtic as a cause to live by rather than just a club to support, and it cannot be overstated what a match at the weekend means when growing up in a working-class area, be it soccer or Gaelic games. Wight was up daily at 7am loading 50kg bags of manure on to a lorry under Thatcher’s Youth Opportunities Programme in the 1980s, living for when Saturday came. He offers a heady look back at this era through its politics and culture, alongside a history of his beloved Hoops and memories of going to matches, the strongest parts of Jungle Days. It’s a strange thing to say about a book, but perhaps there’s too much singing in it. Then again it’s football; sing when you’re winning.
Dark Cloud Over Muckish by Paul O’Donaghue (Anchor House Press, £10.99)
Set in a tiny fictional Irish village, Mullaghbeg, O’Donaghue’s autofiction-driven work crosses the strong historical and cultural currents between Donegal and Glasgow during the recent calamitous years we all experienced: the pandemic and lockdowns, losing loved ones, a sense of isolation with a simultaneous feeling of belonging somewhere else. Dark Cloud Over Muckish has many of the features of a debut novel (takes a while to get going, needs more dialogue, could be tightened in plenty of places, etc). But there are some nice flashes of humanity, and you can feel a strong Martin McDonagh influence in the storyline, with the rural setting, dodgy guards, feuds over land, the promise of a hitman and the added dark premise of a roadtrip in a funeral hearse.
Tradecraft: Writers on John le Carré, edited and introduced by Federico Varese (£30, Bodleian Library Publishing)
December will mean five years since the death of the great political espionage novelist, so this collection of essays from those who knew his work intimately is both timely and revealing, giving us a rich inside track on a writer who made us question who was on the “right side”. The book never crosses into hagiography, but instead offers critical analysis from those who formed part of his oeuvre (Errol Morris on his fascinating hall of mirrors documentary, The Pigeon Tunnel) to studies of le Carré’s leitmotifs, his place in the British Isles and beyond, etc. As one essay states: “(le Carré) reminded readers tirelessly of the lack of the benefits the ending of the Second World War seemed to promise: disarmament, international reconciliation and hope”. He is sorely missed.
