Search results for ""Author Ian Davidson""

Late December Back in '63 tells the story of an unforgettable day in top-flight English football - when 66 goals were netted in just ten fixtures on Boxing Day 1963. The author brings each match to life through archive reports and images, exploring how such a staggering tally of goals was scored. This was the age of attacking formations, just before the era of more defensive disciplines, but what other factors were at play? The book examines and tests the veracity of various myths that surround that extraordinary day. Along with club line-ups, match reports, programmes and images from the fixtures, Late December Back in '63 takes an in-depth look at the careers of the various characters who played their part. It also offers a snapshot of where the national sport stood less than 20 years after World War 2 and the socio-economic changes taking place in the 'Swinging Sixties'. You'll get a picture of the state of the game less than three years before the summer of 1966 and how our future World Cup heroes were doing in their careers.

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The fall of the Bastille on July 14, 1789 has become the commemorative symbol of the French Revolution. But this violent and random act was unrepresentative of the real work of the early revolution, which was taking place ten miles west of Paris, in Versailles. There, the nobles, clergy and commoners of France had just declared themselves a republic, toppling a rotten system of aristocratic privilege and altering the course of history forever. The Revolution was led not by angry mobs, but by the best and brightest of France's growing bourgeoisie: young, educated, ambitious. Their aim was not to destroy, but to build a better state. In just three months they drew up a Declaration of the Rights of Man, which was to become the archetype of all subsequent Declarations worldwide, and they instituted a system of locally elected administration for France which still survives today. They were determined to create an entirely new system of government, based on rights, equality and the rule of law. In the first three years of the Revolution they went a long way toward doing so. Then came Robespierre, the Terror and unspeakable acts of barbarism. In a clear, dispassionate and fast-moving narrative, Ian Davidson shows how and why the Revolutionaries, in just five years, spiralled from the best of the Enlightenment to tyranny and the Terror. The book reminds us that the Revolution was both an inspiration of the finest principles of a new democracy and an awful warning of what can happen when idealism goes wrong.

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