Moving The Goalposts

If you want to know how it feels to be left behind, if you want to know how it feels to be forgotten, if you want to know how it feels to be heartbroken, then read this book.

A tender and often terrifying tour of some of Yorkshire’s - and England’s - most cherished sporting institutions and the communities that surround and succour them, and how their experience reflects the nation’s swaying fortunes since the start of the 1980s, A Yorkshire Tragedy is compelling, illuminating, very human and often quite moving. - Guardian

A well-researched, lovingly-written, thoughtful journey across the sporting highs and struggles of a great English region - placed in the context of its social fabric, qualities, conflicts and historic disasters: Anthony Clavane’s book illuminates, and delivers important home truths throughout.

Again the echoes of Brexit are clear. Commentators and strategists just weren’t listening to the right conversations. Or reading the right things. J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy eloquently tells the story of the “left behind” in the Appallachians and the social and economic costs of change that fuelled the rage underpinning Trump. The British equivalent is the brilliant A Yorkshire Tragedy by Anthony Clavane, which is as good an explanation as you will ever read of how the deindustrialisation of the 70s and 80s fuelled Brexit. - The Times

A Yorkshire Tragedy combines social and sporting history with total relevance to the present day. A fine record of the sad decline of God’s own country.

The language sparkles, the insights flash … The rise and fall of Yorkshire sporting giants is a marvellous prism for the social and economic change in the region … Essential. - Prospect

Authoritative, passionate and evocative this deeply researched work is about more than Yorkshire, more than sport. It is about society and needs to be read in Westminster as much as Leeds, Bradford or Sheffield.