Author Topic: RAWK Reviews: And The Sun Shines Now by Adrian Tempany  (Read 16841 times)

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RAWK Reviews: And The Sun Shines Now by Adrian Tempany
« on: May 23, 2016, 11:24:24 am »


I originally read this book a couple of years ago. I read it as the Inquests began, before it was due for publication, before it was pulled by Faber & Faber to avoid breaching the Attorney General's request for silence. I read it again this month, and like all good histories, this book reads first as a tragedy, and second as a farce. As I read it the first time, I was reminded of the puppets on Spitting Image, and how, back in 1989, we all sat in our acid houses on Sunday night howling at the utter c*nts who ran the country, before tripping off to school and work and college in an acid daze. We thought we were the beat; but we were just beat. And now, in 2016, we don't even have Spitting Image to hold the bastards to account - which is why there are three serving cabinet ministers including the fucking Prime Minister who have mocked and dismissed the case for Justice at Hillsborough. They thought we were beat? We are Liverpool. We're never beat.

First; some transparency. Adrian Tempany is one of us, and one of ours. A Red of decades standing; a match goer, a Hillsborough survivor, a Campaigner, and a RAWKite who has contributed greatly to this website over the years. Out there in the real world he's a professional journalist, writing for The Guardian and the The Observer, and the Financial Times. He's spent a lot of time in Warrington recently. 'And The Sun Shines Now' is rooted in his experiences as a fan, and his endeavours as a journalist. In his book, Ade argues carefully, factually, and passionately that the changing nature of football - in the (now) twenty seven years since Hillsborough - has been brought about through a government sanctioned buy out of the game by Rupert Murdoch and Sky Sports TV.

The sun that shone that dreadful day in April 1989 has cast a long shadow over the  families of the Ninety Six, and the survivors of Hillsborough. It's a shadow cast across the Club and it's fans, and the City and people of Liverpool. The book opens with a powerful and damning assessment of the sloppiness of 1980's corporate culture, and the free market Tory bastards that allowed it to flourish. It's a catalogue of previous near misses at Hillsborough, and the disasters of 'The Herald of Free Enterprise', and the Kings Cross Fire, and the Bradford City fire, and the Piper Alpha platform fire, and air disasters at Lockerbie, and at Kegworth, and the Clapham rail disaster...and 'The Marchioness' sinking on the Thames. It's the 'couldn't give a fuckery' of Tory Britain perpetrated on the general public by the elite. Let's put a marker down here for the alleged SYP cover up at Orgreave. Post-Hillsborough we could probably add the Poll Tax Riots, the murder of Steven Lawrence and the Met Police cover up, the Strangeways prison riot, the Mull Of Kintyre RAF cover up, the Deepcut cover up, and so on. The structure of the State continued to creak; private industry and the newly privatised utilities had their failings exposed, or their corporate and individual errors covered up. This was our evening news before Spitting Image. But we know - as readers -  where this book is leading, and as you relive those fraught times, those memories are stirred, and you find that the lump in your throat is growing bigger, and your eyes are stinging. Because, inevitably, this litany of personal grief, government inaction and corporate incompetence and venal self interest leads us on to the terraces of the Leppings Lane, the away end of an FA Cup semi-final, on the afternoon of April 15th, 1989.

We all know what happened. To varying extents, in as far as we each can bear. Or have to bear. As much as we have read or seen before too much is too much. Before the injustice brings the bile to the back of your throat and the adrenalin of anger runs the blood cold in your veins. Even after the verdicts, the survivors and the families will bear the twenty seven years of indifferent injustice for all time. But as we read again, Adrian provides a detailed, brutal and harrowing first person account of his experience on the Leppings Lane terrace that day. Each passing minute is supported by the forensically researched evidence of Professor Phil Scraton and the team of the Hillsborough Independent Panel, by the accounts of other survivors, and of course it is known to us in our heads and in our hearts. It's an account supported by the new verdicts - our fellow fans were dying unnecessarily ninety minutes after the game had kicked off. Have you stood on a heaving terrace, or lost your footing in a large crowd? Adrian's eloquence is a heartrendingly terrible depiction of the crush, the weight of bodies, the fear and the guilt, the loss of control, the heat and the sweat, the sense of powerlessness, and the instinct to survive at all costs when you are just a footstep - a breath - away from death. It's an account that stays with you, it will have a resonance with anyone who has experienced the power of a crowd - and it's stayed with me throughout the inquests.

Many Liverpool fans will have read similar personal accounts on RAWK and elsewhere, and each and every one of them is as difficult and as harrowing to read as the last. And most Liverpool fans know the Truth of what followed, we know the culpability, we know about the cover ups and the lies, and we know about the enquiries and scrutinies and then panels and inquests, and we know about the search for Justice For The Ninety Six. And now the world knows too. We were right. They lied. There is more to come. Much more. And that's another story for another day. Adrian's account takes a different turn. This account takes fifty pages to succinctly describe the pain and the horror, the cover up, and the seemingly never ending fight for Justice. And then Adrian Tempany takes three hundred pages to systematically tear the Establishment to pieces; to expose the lies and the cover ups, the grubby politicians and the craven officials and the bent police, and the plots that ultimately sold the soul of British football to Rupert Murdoch and ushered in the era of the Premier League.

It's a bold and breathtaking leap but it's supported by detailed research, and by extensive interviews with those on the inside and those on the outside of the game. The argument is pursued with a passion and a polemic borne of his own personal experience at Hillsborough, and the manner in which football changed thereafter. It's a neatly stitched tale of the Taylor Report, and how, all the way back in 1989 Lord Taylor of Gosforth told us then what we know now - the fans were not to blame, that this was a disaster made by Police incompetence and the neglect of the game itself (does any of this, twenty seven years later, sound familiar?). Neglect by the clubs, the FA, and a stitch up by government.

It's the story of Thatcher trying to act up with the Football Supporters Bill, using Colin Moynihan ('Miniature Of Sport' - the ultimate Spitting Image caricature) to force through preposterous legislation, made demonstrably redundant by the events at Hillsborough. Thatcher was stung by Taylor's criticism of the Bill, his skewering of her darlings the South Yorkshire Police, and his exoneration of 'dem Scousers. The Liverpool fans. That bloody city again, 'militant', 'truculent' but still better red than dead after a decade of 'managed decline'. Thatcher didn't understand football, she didn't like football fans and she didn't like Liverpool - she saw Hillsborough as an opportunity to cauterise the working class game and neuter the city. So she handed football to Rupert Murdoch on a plate.

In the summer of Italia 1990, the reforms outlined in the Taylor Report were approved by Westminster. Although some ground improvements would be partially funded by money raised through the football pools, it would mainly be through the commercialisation of the game. The game that exploded across the country that summer - Who Does Turandot Play For? - as Gazza And His Tears washed the hands of the government, rinsed the soul of the Football Association, and lubricated the palms of Chairmen across England. The Hillsborough Disaster was literally the game changer. Saturday lunchtime, Saturday teatime, Sunday lunchtime kick offs, Monday Night Football - the deregulated broadcast media set about the fixture list as the fans in the stadia quite literally took a back seat. For the 1994/5 season the top flight was completely all seater - we lost the standing Kop and other famous grounds succumbed completely to market forces, and the power of Sky TV. Football was sold from beneath the feet of the fans, and we were dumped on our arses by our new Premiership overlords. Most of those arses were dumped on their own sofas, as the capacity dropped in all seater stadia. Season ticket holders were left holding on to their own seat for grim death - and beyond, if the myths about the Anfield season ticket waiting list are true. As the game was sold, and sold again, the parallels with wider society were unavoidable. Adran has a talent for digging up the right quote at the right time: Will Hutton wrote in The Guardian in January 2013 that "in Britain, there are no legal or governance structures that put football or the fans at the centre of a club owner's concerns...market forces are deified as the only value worth celebrating...the result is a moral and economic disaster - in football as in the wider economy". See also: The NHS under Jeremy H*nt.

We lost the community around football, and we were given the game that we have today. Powerful, awash with money, and in many ways a shadow of it's former self. As Adrian elaborates, 'franchises' like Milton Keynes, the abomination that is the threat of the 'Hull Tigers', and the nonsense with the Cardiff Bluebirds identity swap with the Red Dragons, are indicative of a game taken away from the people. Adrian takes us for a culturally rich tour through the 90's, swaggering through Euro 96 via Oasis at Knebworth, and deep into the politicking behind the football scenes. Here we witness the early days of Andy Burnham's influence on the game. As part of the Football Task Force, Burnham sought to bring football - to all intents and purposes The Premier League - to some form of account in terms of it's relationship with the fans, and the communities that they purport to serve. In reality, the reverse is the case for most clubs these days. The local community needs the Club more, because our Premiership Clubs are increasingly providing amenities, education and services to the people in their vicinity. Whilst this belated sense of community is welcome, it needn't have been that way in the UK. In Europe, similarly beset by hooliganism, things have worked out differently. In later chapters, Adrian travels to Gelsenkirchen to visit Schalke 04, a beacon for football fans because 'they are a club with an identity protected in a written constitution'. It's the other path on the fork in the road, the one the FA chose to avoid, the one that the oligarchs of our game have swerved. At St Pauli, Ade encounters a football club that has a built a mythology all of it's own - it's motto 'St Pauli: Not Established Since 1910' - football for punks. It's not perfect, it doesn't always work, but these Clubs are still light years ahead of the UK Leagues, where there are only a handful of professional clubs in the hands of their own fans.

When this book was first written - in the wake of the Hillsborough Independent Panel Report - the sense of blistering injustice that fuelled the first reading was intense. Reading it again in the wake of the Inquest verdict barely diminishes the feelings of loss, the loss of lives, the game we knew, the lost opportunity to make the game of the people belong to the people. From my own perspective, much of the book resonates with my personal experience - the age I lived through, knowledge of the Justice campaign - and this will be true for many Reds who read this.
However, the updated version of 'And The Sun Shines Now' comes with an added insight, which chills the blood as much as anything contained in Adrian's personal testimony or his assessment of the disaster. Behind the scenes a network of survivors, campaigners have been busy keeping a close eye on the inquest proceedings, cross referencing the vast Hillsborough independent Panel archive against the testimony in Warrington. The last couple of years of enforced silence on this website have been punctuated by the occasional request for help - genealogists, legal advice, handwriting experts - a group of RAWK users and others added into the site from other sources, who have been diligent in holding the witness statements to account. It's been successful. Key discrepancies have been passed on to the legal teams, connections have been unearthed, evidence confirmed, or disputed. The IPCC and Operation Resolve have been informed, RAWK investigators have been invited to present to both agencies. And so behind the scenes, we have watched the inquests unfold with trepidation, and occasionally relief, even the beginning of hope when Duckenfield gave his evidence.

And yet there were scenes behind the scenes. Adrian reveals a scramble at the Warrington Inquests at the start of this year, when it became apparent that - after months of disreputable testimony - Lord Justice Goldring was preparing to offer the possibility of a fig leaf for the reputation of South Yorkshire Police. Adrian had been meeting for months with a small group of engaged survivors and RAWK campaigners - 24/7, The Tenacious Kennedy, bluelagos, SNE Richie and Speedy Molby - and with a mysterious contact who shall be known as "The Man In The Pub". He met them in just before Christmas, and presented them with a bombshell; one with potentially massive and disruptive repercussions. At the crux of it - an inquest verdict that might implicate the survivors, after denying them the opportunity defend themselves. What became known to us as Question Seven - "Was there any behaviour on the part of football supporters which caused or contributed to the dangerous situation at the Leppings Lane turnstiles?" This is thought to be an unprecedented move in British law - an opportunity for an inquest jury to place blame on unrepresented people. This was a decision that saw a protracted legal exchange between Adrian, 24/7, bluelagos, SNE Richie, Spartacus and Speedy Molby one one side, and the Coroner on the other. A decision that could ultimately lead to a threat to halt the process. The families and the survivors have relived the Hillsborough tragedy over twenty seven years of history, and here, at the last moment, it threatened to descend into another Establishment farce. As we know, the jurors saw the tawdry nature of the SYP legal teams, and saw the obscene flaw in the Coroner's travesty of a question. If the jury had found the fans in any way liable it would have lead to a challenge for an unsafe verdict. Goldring would have been discredited, the Inquests would have been a waste of time, and we would have been holding a very different set of conversations in the media, on these boards, in the fabric of public discourse. Those six men in the pub would have been faced with more pain and heartache - those six men and thousands more affected by the Hillsborough Disaster - too much, really for anyone to bear. It's worth noting the explicit reaction of campaigners like Margaret Aspinall, who knew the risk to the reputation of our fans and the danger that Goldring would recreate the narrative.

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/ieVUJZJbeiM" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/ieVUJZJbeiM</a>

And The Sun Shines Now. In these pages, Adrian Tempany has shone a light on to one of the darkest events in recent British history. The crush at Hillsborough has been a black hole in our national consciousness, drawing in the light, a compression of the Truth that seemed inescapable. But the Truth has escaped, and as events unfold in the coming months ahead, it seems likely that the repercussions will be every bit as seismic as the original Disaster. It's trite to say that much has changed in twenty seven years, but this book is both a compelling indictment of how those changes happened and a damning assessment of the society that allowed it to happen. 'And The Sun Shines Now' highlights the failures and the missed opportunities to make the right decisions in the aftermath of Hillsborough, and how that changed modern Britain.
Although many of you reading this review will read the book as Liverpool fans, in truth I think there is a bigger story articulated in these pages: it's a book about Hillsborough, and it's a book about football. It's a book about how Britain got fucked up. To varying extents, any of 80's tragedies and disasters outlined in the opening pages of 'And The Sun Shines Now' could be the prism through which unaccountability, incompetence, miscarriage, misdirection, expediency and venality lead to a disaster, and then cover up. Hillsborough is our tragedy, but it a tragedy that has echoes across the coalfields of South Yorkshire, the training grounds of Deepcut Barracks, in car parks and back rooms in Rotherham. It will echo through courtrooms for years to come.
« Last Edit: May 24, 2016, 09:02:11 am by MichaelA »

Offline Andy G

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Re: RAWK Reviews: And The Sun Shines Now by Adrian Tempany
« Reply #1 on: May 23, 2016, 12:28:32 pm »
Great review.  Can't wait for the book to arrive.
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Re: RAWK Reviews: And The Sun Shines Now by Adrian Tempany
« Reply #2 on: May 23, 2016, 12:40:18 pm »
Nice one Michael, brilliant review.

Offline Alan_X

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Re: RAWK Reviews: And The Sun Shines Now by Adrian Tempany
« Reply #3 on: May 23, 2016, 12:45:53 pm »
Thanks MIke. I look forward to buying it* and reading it.

*I urge everyone to buy copy, read it and pass it on.
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Re: RAWK Reviews: And The Sun Shines Now by Adrian Tempany
« Reply #4 on: May 23, 2016, 01:09:12 pm »
Excellent review and I can't wait to read the book. But I hate the title and that piece of commentary from Peter Jones. As if 'And the sun shines now' is an allegory of something. It isn't. It was the horror at the start of 27 years of injustice and grief that will never disappear for those affected. I've never understood it and it has always made me angry, as if the sun shining made things OK. If someone can explain it to me I would be grateful.

Offline Alan_X

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Re: RAWK Reviews: And The Sun Shines Now by Adrian Tempany
« Reply #5 on: May 23, 2016, 01:14:49 pm »
Excellent review and I can't wait to read the book. But I hate the title and that piece of commentary from Peter Jones. As if 'And the sun shines now' is an allegory of something. It isn't. It was the horror at the start of 27 years of injustice and grief that will never disappear for those affected. I've never understood it and it has always made me angry, as if the sun shining made things OK. If someone can explain it to me I would be grateful.

It's not an allegory of anything. I won't speak for Ade (who's title it is) but for me it's about the irony and the obscenity of people dying on such a beautiful day.
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Re: RAWK Reviews: And The Sun Shines Now by Adrian Tempany
« Reply #6 on: May 23, 2016, 01:26:13 pm »
Where's best to get/order the book?

Offline MichaelA

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Re: RAWK Reviews: And The Sun Shines Now by Adrian Tempany
« Reply #9 on: May 23, 2016, 02:26:14 pm »
Superb Review mate.

« Last Edit: May 23, 2016, 03:02:45 pm by Timbo's Goals »

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Re: RAWK Reviews: And The Sun Shines Now by Adrian Tempany
« Reply #10 on: May 23, 2016, 02:31:31 pm »
Outstanding review Michael. It sounds such an important book on many levels. Well done for writing it Adrian. I've cleared a space for it on my shelves.
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Re: RAWK Reviews: And The Sun Shines Now by Adrian Tempany
« Reply #11 on: May 23, 2016, 03:06:58 pm »
But I hate the title and that piece of commentary from Peter Jones. As if 'And the sun shines now' is an allegory of something. It isn't. It was the horror at the start of 27 years of injustice and grief that will never disappear for those affected. I've never understood it and it has always made me angry, as if the sun shining made things OK. If someone can explain it to me I would be grateful.

I can see why it might resonate in a disturbing way with some folks - like it clearly does with yourself. And if that is the case then you can only speak as you personally find it.

However, I think most who were there and look back on the words of a person who was football's finest ever radio commentator will find a source of solace and comfort in the respectful and poignant way Peter Jones concludes his own 5 hour or so long commentary on that tragic day. I know as one of the, thankfully, majority who did return that I do and I can't think of anyone more fitting than Peter Jones to have represented the inevitable radio coverage of such a sporting tragedy.

No way is it inferring everything will ever be okay. Rather, the opposite. He's actually using the sunlit beauty of the day to heighten the contrasting darkness of what happened.

So many who were there have vivid recollections of the stark contrast between the outrageous sunlit beauty of the day as it began as they set out from Liverpool and the dark horror of what was to ensue. Dave Kirby wrote an unbearably sad poem of his journey that day which used that same sunlitbeauty/darkness contrast as its centrepoint.

Of course, such metaphor works even more potently in the light of the Warrington verdicts and it wouldn't be surprising if the author had that in mind too when deliberating over a fitting title for his book. Think of Phil Scraton , Sheila Coleman and Ann Jemphrey as they came up with the incredibly powerful double entendre No Last Rights title for the title of the very first Hillsborough publication. Like it was with those three amazing campaigners, this isn't a case of the author taking things lightly. Rather it's entirely fitting that a work of this gravity has a title that invokes a note of positivity amidst all the inevitable bleakness. And ultimately it will be the book's content that is important and will be remembered.

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Re: RAWK Reviews: And The Sun Shines Now by Adrian Tempany
« Reply #12 on: May 23, 2016, 03:58:57 pm »
I am adding to this thread my own slightly-amended review of the book which I was able to read two years ago before publication was suspended by the Attorney General's Office :

Many might perceive this to be “just another Hillsborough book”. But it is more than that. Much more. What happened in Sheffield is covered and dissected meticulously as is the very fabric of British society and The Establishment that governed it in a decade during which a number of different tragedies claimed hundreds of lives.

If ever there was “an accident waiting to happen”, the location was the home stadium of Sheffield Wednesday Football Club and the date was Saturday the 15th of April 1989. Author Adrian Tempany was there in one of the pens. Only good fortune and survival instinct prevented his name from being added to ninety-six others. Adrian’s account of what he experienced in pen 3 of the Leppings Lane terrace as he saw his life slipping away while others around him perished is both moving and powerful and a most remarkable piece of writing. His words will stir many emotions in the reader, perhaps the main ones being compassion and anger. But he doesn’t write in this way to be over-dramatic. It is because he wants us to know what it felt like to be in there. Many Hillsborough survivors have told their stories, I know that. But this account will tear your heart out.

It was a major surprise that there had been no fatalities at Hillsborough in previous F.A. cup semi-finals. In both 1981 (Tottenham Hotspur v Wolverhampton Wanderers) and 1987 (Leeds United v Coventry City) there had been significant overcrowding on the Leppings Lane terraces; and this was also experienced by Liverpool supporters at the 1988 semi-final against Nottingham Forest. Sheffield Wednesday Football Club blamed the near-disaster in 1981 on “poor policing” but there is no doubt that by 1989 “Hillsborough was in a wretched condition”. All English stadia with a capacity of five thousand or more required a safety certificate issued by the local authority. When the South Yorkshire County Council was abolished in 1986, responsibility for this passed to Sheffield City Council. Although significant upgrades had been made to Hillsborough throughout the Nineteen-Eighties, the stadium’s safety certificate had never been updated to take these upgrades into account.

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher never made any secret of her dislike of football supporters, effectively calling them “enemies of the State”. In the first half of the Nineteen-Eighties there was “a Conservative Government that was trying to dismantle the building-blocks of British working-class life, one by one”. During Thatcher’s first decade as P.M. there were frequent bitter labour disputes, most notably with the miners. Seventy-one miners were charged with rioting earlier in the decade and the counsel who successfully acquitted three of them declared that the “South Yorkshire Police operated a culture of fabricating evidence with impunity”. So the warning signs were already there. On Sunday the 16th of April 1989 Thatcher and her entourage of senior politicians and policemen visited the stadium in Sheffield that had seen such terrible scenes 24 hours earlier. Before she arrived, South Yorkshire Police held a meeting chaired by their Chief Constable Peter Wright. Is it conceivable that Thatcher did not have a meeting with the Police away from the cameras after the stadium visit was over ? Not really, not when her own Press Secretary Bernard Ingham later admitted “I know what I learned on the spot. To blame the Police is a cop-out”. “On the spot” means while he was there; and if Ingham knew, we can be sure that Thatcher also knew (what the Police version of events already was). Sun Editor Kelvin MacKenzie also knew what he was doing, even if it took him years to admit that he had made a catastrophic mistake by believing what a Member of Parliament had told him.

As 1989 ended, satellite television “was set to change the British media”. “Football would be pivotal in the transformation of Rupert Murdoch from a media maverick into the most powerful broadcaster in Britain”. Football was also part of the general ‘dismantling’ process by the ruling Government. The 1990 World Cup in Italy partly restored the sport’s image but financially and socially things were changing. Rapidly. “Football now had to move with the society around it; and it was, increasingly, an upwardly-mobile society”. With the emergence of the English Premier League just around the corner, Lord Justice Taylor had already urged the football authorities to “extract the highest possible price for television rights … and develop commercial opportunities”. This certainly happened but sadly “BSkyB works tirelessly to assure us there is no history of football before 1992”. Every ground in the top two divisions was expected to become  all-seater by the start of the 1994-95 season. But it all had to be paid for and television money alone was not going to do that. Inevitably ticket prices rose (and have continued to do so, often steeply) until a situation was reached where “the price to be paid for all-seater stadia is that children and young adults are disappearing from the match”. Surveys have proved that this category of spectator has been declining steadily for many years. ‘Terrace culture’ has always been an important part of the English game but there will never be a similar ’Seat culture’. “Kids who have grown up in the Premier League era have never known what it is like to stand”. It is different in Germany, where Adrian Tempany spent a busy but enlightening week. Over there “people on a terrace will take responsibility for each other in a way that you are not encouraged to do whilst sat in an individual seat”. Supporters in Germany have owned some clubs for decades because of “a unique combination of social and political factors”. There is a phenomenal communal spirit at such clubs, especially at Hamburg’s St. Pauli, where the author found “a community club with an eye on local issues”.

A lot has changed in the twenty-seven years since the Hillsborough disaster; and a lot more is now known about why that disaster happened. Hillsborough did not happen because spectators stood on terraces, terraces that the Government was quick to consign to the scrapheap. People died because a number of poor decisions and bad errors of judgement were made by individuals and groups who had been given the responsibility to oversee our national sport. Mister Tempany nearly lost his own life because of those decisions but thankfully he has survived to tell the tale, passionately and eloquently. In September 2012 the author was finally able to exorcise some of the ghosts of April 1989 when he was one of eighty journalists who attended the press conference held by the Hillsborough Independent Panel in Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral. It was a cathartic experience for him to be present as “23 years of lies were unpacked before the public” in what Queen’s Counsel Michael Mansfield described as “the biggest cover-up in British history”. This book opens and closes with Hillsborough but it isn’t exclusively about one topic, even though that topic appears in the book’s sub-title. There is much to think about from the intervening years too, years in which the sport itself is much the same when it comes to its rules but the atmosphere around it, the match-day experience if you like, is now totally different to when the Nineteen-Eighties closed. Adrian Tempany takes us through the changes (some good, some not so good) and it is a remarkable journey.

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Re: RAWK Reviews: And The Sun Shines Now by Adrian Tempany
« Reply #13 on: May 23, 2016, 04:44:24 pm »
Really good review.

Good choice of name: 'The man in the pub'. That could have people guessing, if you like those sorts of things. But I like it for a different reason. Many people have done so much in the fight for justice, in many ways. That man kind of represents all of them.

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Re: RAWK Reviews: And The Sun Shines Now by Adrian Tempany
« Reply #14 on: May 23, 2016, 08:17:09 pm »
I'd add this to the list too: http://www.newsfromnowhere.org.uk/ - you'll pay a few quid more than on the Guardian, but News from Nowhere is a Liverpool institution (and also a not-for-profit).


Thanks for that Rhi, just ordered with them although they said they're not in stock as yet.

Just to echo everybody, great review Michael.
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Re: RAWK Reviews: And The Sun Shines Now by Adrian Tempany
« Reply #15 on: May 23, 2016, 08:28:33 pm »
Thanks for that Rhi, just ordered with them although they said they're not in stock as yet.

Just to echo everybody, great review Michael.

Published very early June.
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Re: RAWK Reviews: And The Sun Shines Now by Adrian Tempany
« Reply #16 on: May 23, 2016, 08:34:55 pm »
Published very early June.

Cheers for that, means I'll have something decent to read on holiday.
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Re: RAWK Reviews: And The Sun Shines Now by Adrian Tempany
« Reply #17 on: May 23, 2016, 10:15:56 pm »
After reading the powerful and emotive article Adrian wrote after the verdict, where his beautiful prose and razor sharp insight was used to convey the horror of being trapped in the central pens and the enormity of what happened later. This book is a must buy for me, he moves effortlessly from the human, the personal to the big picture and that's the type of writing I enjoy. That it is about a subject that is so close to our hearts makes it compelling for me.
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Re: RAWK Reviews: And The Sun Shines Now by Adrian Tempany
« Reply #18 on: May 23, 2016, 10:39:30 pm »
Excellent review Mike. Ade, you must be made up with the highest possible praise from David Peace - one of the best writers on Britain in the 1970s and 80s.

The author tells me there are no complimentary copies of ATSSN available but - if you buy it - he promises to get you a beer the next time he sees you. ;)
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Re: RAWK Reviews: And The Sun Shines Now by Adrian Tempany
« Reply #19 on: May 23, 2016, 11:37:29 pm »
Can he get a round of red wine in?
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Re: RAWK Reviews: And The Sun Shines Now by Adrian Tempany
« Reply #20 on: May 24, 2016, 08:39:51 am »
Speedy - no free copies? 

Maybe we could suggest a "Down a pint, loser pays for the book" night  ;D

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Re: RAWK Reviews: And The Sun Shines Now by Adrian Tempany
« Reply #21 on: May 24, 2016, 10:00:28 am »
Thanks for the links Michael. Copy ordered.
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Re: RAWK Reviews: And The Sun Shines Now by Adrian Tempany
« Reply #22 on: May 24, 2016, 11:12:08 am »
Excellent review Mike. Ade, you must be made up with the highest possible praise from David Peace - one of the best writers on Britain in the 1970s and 80s.

The author tells me there are no complimentary copies of ATSSN available but - if you buy it - he promises to get you a beer the next time he sees you. ;)

Absolutely. Only, I'm hoping so many of you buy it I'll be off to the Cayman Islands for the next couple of years. Goldring could do with some company out there, I hear.

Mike - huge thanks for such a brilliant review: I only wish some reviewers on the papers had been as intelligent and considered as you have been. You've captured the tone and content of the book perfectly. Great review.

The book is out officially on 2 June, but some people seem to have got it already on the Kindle version.

just to clear up the choice of the title, And the Sun Shines Now. I picked it for 3 reasons:

1. I wanted to pay tribute to the great Peter Jones. That piece of commentary is one of the most poignant, perceptive and empathic pieces of broadcasting I've ever heard. It captured the sense of devastation, despair, and bitter irony of the sun shining over that stadium at around 5pm that day. I heard it on the car radio as we were heading south on the M1.

2. The book begins with Hillsborough, and ends with the inquests, but 80% of it is about what followed Hillsborough: the response to the disaster, and how football was changed off the back of it (dishonestly, I argue). Therefore, from the moment Jones delivered that broadcast, football as we knew it was over. It was the end of an era: and so I thought it was the starting point in a sense for all that followed.

3. The book is a critique of the PL era, Sky, and the hype around the 'whole new ball game'. We're told constantly that everything about football in the modern era is great, and we should be lucky to have this shiny new product. I question that. Therefore, the title is ironic: does the sun shine now, as we're always told?

Hope that clears up the title anyway. Thanks to everyone who's taken an interest in the book - I really appreciate it.

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« Last Edit: May 24, 2016, 11:14:29 am by That Kennedy moment »
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Re: RAWK Reviews: And The Sun Shines Now by Adrian Tempany
« Reply #23 on: May 24, 2016, 12:02:53 pm »
Excellent review and I can't wait to read the book. But I hate the title and that piece of commentary from Peter Jones. As if 'And the sun shines now' is an allegory of something. It isn't. It was the horror at the start of 27 years of injustice and grief that will never disappear for those affected. I've never understood it and it has always made me angry, as if the sun shining made things OK. If someone can explain it to me I would be grateful.

I think it is the best title of a football related book ever.  For me, the contrast of the day was perfectly summed up by Peter Jones and I still cry when I watch that piece.  What should have been a great day was ruined.  What should have been a great sport has been ruined (in my mind anyway).  Strange how people's perceptions of the same thing can be so different, neither wrong or right.
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Re: RAWK Reviews: And The Sun Shines Now by Adrian Tempany
« Reply #24 on: May 24, 2016, 12:05:08 pm »


Mmm.  Should have read the last post before responding.
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Re: RAWK Reviews: And The Sun Shines Now by Adrian Tempany
« Reply #25 on: May 25, 2016, 12:10:19 am »
On the title, I think it's perfect for the book. I used to think 'what does he mean now? The sun shone all day!' But I was young and had no poetry in my soul.

Peter Jones was a great broadcaster. He died in 1990, but those voices from your childhood will always seem familiar.
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Re: RAWK Reviews: And The Sun Shines Now by Adrian Tempany
« Reply #26 on: May 25, 2016, 07:24:30 am »
The book is out officially on 2 June, but some people seem to have got it already on the Kindle version.


Ade, the Kindle version is available now. I've bought my copy and will read it over the next couple of days.
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Re: RAWK Reviews: And The Sun Shines Now by Adrian Tempany
« Reply #27 on: May 25, 2016, 09:51:02 am »
"I want to build a team that's invincible, so that they have to send a team from bloody Mars to beat us."

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Re: RAWK Reviews: And The Sun Shines Now by Adrian Tempany
« Reply #28 on: May 25, 2016, 10:36:28 am »
Ade, the Kindle version is available now. I've bought my copy and will read it over the next couple of days.

Great stuff, thanks Al
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Re: RAWK Reviews: And The Sun Shines Now by Adrian Tempany
« Reply #29 on: May 25, 2016, 07:12:49 pm »
Canadian?

If you could sort it, yes...

Great stuff, thanks Al

Got an email from Guardian bookshop to advise my copy has been dispatched.
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Re: RAWK Reviews: And The Sun Shines Now by Adrian Tempany
« Reply #30 on: May 25, 2016, 07:28:03 pm »
Excellent review and I can't wait to read the book. But I hate the title and that piece of commentary from Peter Jones. As if 'And the sun shines now' is an allegory of something. It isn't. It was the horror at the start of 27 years of injustice and grief that will never disappear for those affected. I've never understood it and it has always made me angry, as if the sun shining made things OK. If someone can explain it to me I would be grateful.

I took it as coming from a perspective of "at the end of the storm, there's a golden sky"

Works for me and symbolises our club and its history.
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Re: RAWK Reviews: And The Sun Shines Now by Adrian Tempany
« Reply #31 on: May 25, 2016, 08:32:17 pm »
Picked this up today, thanks for the recommendations all (and for writing it!).

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Re: RAWK Reviews: And The Sun Shines Now by Adrian Tempany
« Reply #32 on: May 25, 2016, 09:04:00 pm »
After reading the powerful and emotive article Adrian wrote after the verdict, where his beautiful prose and razor sharp insight was used to convey the horror of being trapped in the central pens and the enormity of what happened later. This book is a must buy for me, he moves effortlessly from the human, the personal to the big picture and that's the type of writing I enjoy. That it is about a subject that is so close to our hearts makes it compelling for me.
That was such a warm, brilliant, and heartbreaking piece. Almost wrote 'peace' there, and I say that because it's a sort of hopefully apt mistake.
Definitely get this, in town on Friday so I'll ask in News from Nowhere,  Asking always helps. And read it, pass it on.

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Re: RAWK Reviews: And The Sun Shines Now by Adrian Tempany
« Reply #33 on: May 26, 2016, 12:53:19 am »
Superb review of a book I look forward to reading.

Regarding the title, Peter Jones is indeed a doyen of radio broadcasting and although his words on that day were poignant and dramatic; it was his delivery of them that has and will forever stay with me. He, too, knew the game was changed forever that day and his voice, cracking with emotion, depicted him lamenting that. A cracking title I believe.
« Last Edit: May 26, 2016, 06:36:15 am by vivabobbygraham »
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Re: RAWK Reviews: And The Sun Shines Now by Adrian Tempany
« Reply #34 on: May 26, 2016, 08:01:06 am »
It's not an allegory of anything. I won't speak for Ade (who's title it is) but for me it's about the irony and the obscenity of people dying on such a beautiful day.
Yep. He uses the word irony in his commentary when he first talks about the sun shining. He was a great commentator who sadly passed not long after.

Looking forward to this, sounds like essential reading for all football supporters.

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Re: RAWK Reviews: And The Sun Shines Now by Adrian Tempany
« Reply #35 on: May 26, 2016, 08:45:16 am »
If you could sort it, yes...

Got an email from Guardian bookshop to advise my copy has been dispatched.

Thanks for letting me know, Jon - I wasn't sure The Guardian shop was on top of things. I do now - cheers
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Re: RAWK Reviews: And The Sun Shines Now by Adrian Tempany
« Reply #36 on: May 26, 2016, 11:10:46 am »
Fantastic review mate, it's the first time I've bought a book after reading a review.
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Re: RAWK Reviews: And The Sun Shines Now by Adrian Tempany
« Reply #37 on: May 26, 2016, 12:46:36 pm »
Thanks for review Michael and shining some light on what I agree was a travesty of a question. No 7.

I thought I was the only one who thought this back in March.

Will be ordering very soon and spreading the word about it.
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Re: RAWK Reviews: And The Sun Shines Now by Adrian Tempany
« Reply #38 on: May 26, 2016, 01:23:15 pm »
Absolutely. Only, I'm hoping so many of you buy it I'll be off to the Cayman Islands for the next couple of years. Goldring could do with some company out there, I hear.

Mike - huge thanks for such a brilliant review: I only wish some reviewers on the papers had been as intelligent and considered as you have been. You've captured the tone and content of the book perfectly. Great review.

The book is out officially on 2 June, but some people seem to have got it already on the Kindle version.

just to clear up the choice of the title, And the Sun Shines Now. I picked it for 3 reasons:

1. I wanted to pay tribute to the great Peter Jones. That piece of commentary is one of the most poignant, perceptive and empathic pieces of broadcasting I've ever heard. It captured the sense of devastation, despair, and bitter irony of the sun shining over that stadium at around 5pm that day. I heard it on the car radio as we were heading south on the M1.

2. The book begins with Hillsborough, and ends with the inquests, but 80% of it is about what followed Hillsborough: the response to the disaster, and how football was changed off the back of it (dishonestly, I argue). Therefore, from the moment Jones delivered that broadcast, football as we knew it was over. It was the end of an era: and so I thought it was the starting point in a sense for all that followed.

3. The book is a critique of the PL era, Sky, and the hype around the 'whole new ball game'. We're told constantly that everything about football in the modern era is great, and we should be lucky to have this shiny new product. I question that. Therefore, the title is ironic: does the sun shine now, as we're always told?

Hope that clears up the title anyway. Thanks to everyone who's taken an interest in the book - I really appreciate it.

Right, the beers are on Speedy Molby

Thank you so much for explaining the title. Really appreciated.

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Re: RAWK Reviews: And The Sun Shines Now by Adrian Tempany
« Reply #39 on: May 26, 2016, 01:30:35 pm »


Right, the beers are on Speedy Molby

Had never heard of Adrian Tempany until very recently but have been following the TWK account from the off, unaware who was running it. Absolutely superb work you've been doing for a number of years now on the cover up.
« Last Edit: May 26, 2016, 01:36:30 pm by DangerScouse »