Nearly Reach the Sky: A Farewell to Upton Park

by Brian Williams

Success, failure, heroism, stupidity, talent, skulduggery ... Upton Park has seen it all. If supporting his club for fifty years has taught Brian Williams one thing it's that football fans definitely need a sense of humour - how else would they cope with the trials and tribulations that are part and parcel of cheering on their team? In this frank and funny take on the travails of a die-hard football supporter, Williams takes a nostalgic look back at some of the great players, great triumphs and great calamities that have marked West Ham's time at Upton Park, exploring the club's influence on its fans, the East End and football as a whole over the course of a lifetime. A Fever Pitch for the Premier League generation, Nearly Reach the Sky is an anecdotal journey through the seminal goals, games, fouls and finals, told with all the comedy, tragedy and irrationality fans of any team will recognise. This is a witty, fond, passionate and poignant tribute to the end of an era at Upton Park, as well as a universal meditation on the perks and perils of football fandom.

331 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 10, 2015

About the author

This is the disambiguation profile for otherwise unseparated authors publishing as Brian Williams

Reviews

[Mark Joyce · Rating 4 out of 5]

There’s a time and a place for wallowing in nostalgia and if it’s not a football stadium on the cusp of locking its gates after 100-odd years of continuous service then I don’t know when and where it is. Brian Williams is unusual for a West Ham memoirist of his generation in that he’s not a heavily tattooed, Lacoste-wearing former hooligan wistfully recalling the various rail hubs at which he’s wielded a snooker ball in a sock against rival firms. This is a much more wholesome affair which among other things charts the development of football from the edgy, counter-cultural scene it was in the 70s and 80s to the mass appeal Premier League of today. It’s a positive, warm spirited book, although there are inevitable undercurrents of sadness for all the good stuff that has been lost alongside the many positive changes football has undergone in the last 20-30 years.