Footballers Don't Cry by William Smith

Footballers Don't Cry : An English Family's Experience of the 20th Century by William Smith

A history of the first three-quarters of the 20th century from an 'ordinary' person's perspective - it is subtitled "An English family's experience of the twentieth century ". The central figure is my father, a soldier of the 1914 - 18 war, who fought at Gallipoli and in France , but was drastically wounded only days before the fighting ended , to spend the rest of his life (he was eighty when he died ), battling the depression of the 1930s , the Second World War and everything else that history brought. An English newspaper, reviewing the book ,called him 'A slave to circumstance', although that could be misleading, given his 'battling' approach to life and its trials. Despite the title (Dad was a promising soccer player before the war), this isn't a sports book, and while its start is in Britain, it moves to the many countries, including New Zealand, where the adventure that was the 20th century took people. Although started as a family project, this book has seemed to resonate poignantly with very many people - the best-selling British novelist Margaret Forster wrote 'I've been sitting all day in the garden reading your book and I relished it in all sorts of ways............I hope you got as much pleasure from writing it as I did from reading it.' Many readers seem to find links to their own experience - what times we have lived through!

Author William Smith was born in Carlisle.

£11.99