Topic: RAWK Reviews: And The Sun Shines Now by Adrian Tempany

[Bluelagos]

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.

The person behind TWK account is someone else - Ade has his own twitter feed cunningly disguised as @AdrianTempany 

I know TWK wishes for their ID to remain private - so am everyone will respect that. 

Ade - Guardian ordered book just arrived.   Cheated and read the last chapter first - that's some chapter mate.  Will leave the first chapter for a few weeks for obvious reasons.   A very powerful last line btw.   

[DangerScouse]

The person behind TWK account is someone else - Ade has his own twitter feed cunningly disguised as @AdrianTempany 

Ade - Guardian ordered book just arrived.   Cheated and read the last chapter first - that's some chapter mate.  Will leave the first chapter for a few weeks for obvious reasons.   A very powerful last line btw.   

Ha . . . . I'm following that too.

[MichaelA]

it's the first time I've bought a book after reading a review.

That's made me very happy! Thanks to all of you who have praised the review, but it's only a response to the source material which ultimately deserves the credit. And the sales.

Adrian has authored a tremendously well written book, based on diligent research, thorough interviews, skilfully argued, with a perspective borne of considered thinking and bitter personal experience.

[Jonathan Hall ☆☆☆☆☆☆]

Thanks for letting me know, Jon - I wasn't sure The Guardian shop was on top of things. I do now - cheers

It got delivered today. June already

[John C]

I've only just got round to reading this. It was absolutely wonderful Michael, poignantly brilliant.

Please, everyone, purchase this book and buy a copy for your best mate.

[The Tenacious Kennedy]

The person behind TWK account is someone else - Ade has his own twitter feed cunningly disguised as @AdrianTempany 

I'm TWK (@wrong_kennedy) the one true Kennedy on RAWK

Mods changed my RAWK name to TTK from TWK on here a while back

Brilliant review Mike, and really looking forward to reading the book Ade

[WEST HAM PAUL]

Just finished reading this, this morning. Great read couldn't put it down .

I felt like it was describing my own experiences of being a young working class male who over the 1980's & early 90's made my own rights of passage on the terraces to the kid aged 5 at the front to the late teens lad then up the back of the terrace behind the goal seeing familiar faces, loads of songs , hugging strangers when we scored. Without fully realising it at the time I was part of something traveling home & away & having fun win or lose .

In great detail it describes how the game has been taken away from us over the years & sanitised for monetary greed .

I now find myself one of those fans described in the book who also gradually drifted away from the game I now go to the odd game here or there due to cost & the atmosphere is frankly shit .

I'm thankful I saw the late 80's & early 90's regarding atmosphere & terracing as I find the modern football fan does my head in with there constant moaning , whinging & unrealistic expectations & having to sit next to one for 90 minutes & I can't move ruins the match day experience

[saoirse08]

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.

Excellent review, Michael. After reading Adrian's Observer piece the other week, I was pretty sure I was gonna buy the book. After reading this, I know I'm definitely buying it. Thanks for taking the time to post it. I shall also be encouraging others to buy it too.

[That Kennedy moment]

Just finished ready this, this morning. Great read couldn't put it down .

I felt like it was describing my own experiences of being a young working class male who over the 1980's & early 90's made my own rights of passage on the terraces to the kid aged 5 at the front to the late teens lad then up the back of the terrace behind the goal seeing familiar faces, loads of songs , hugging strangers when we scored. Without fully realising it at the time I was part of something traveling home & away & having fun win or lose .

In great detail it describes how the game has been taken away from us over the years & sanitised for monetary greed .

I now find myself one of those fans described in the book who also gradually drifted away from the game I now go to the odd game here or there due to cost & the atmosphere is frankly shit .

I'm thankful I saw the late 80's & early 90's regarding atmosphere & terracing as I find the modern football fan does my head in with there constant moaning , whinging & unrealistic expectations & having to sit next to one for 90 minutes & I can't move ruins the match day experience

Cheers for this Paul - it's good to hear that the book resonates with people who aren't Liverpool fans too.

Great stuff, thank you. And keep posting - you have a lot of friends on here.

[jason67]

Yeah, the book is just pre-order for now. I think the release date is 2nd June or something, as Hally says. They confirmed on Twitter they were getting the book in as soon as it's published

Just had an email saying the book is in stock and mine has been dispatched...

http://www.newsfromnowhere.org.uk/

After reading what WH Paul has posted I think it'll be just where I am with football at the moment.

[red annie]

I am a bit frightened to read it. I really want to. However I struggled (and failed) to read Phil Scraton's book because it was all a bit too raw. I am pretty well informed about what happened, why and how but all of the books are hard to read from an emotional angle. How does Ade's compare? I would like to read it.

[driftinwest]

I've ordered my copy and it will be here next week,

[ACLE]

Received the book on Friday (ordered it via Faber & Faber) only to receive email from Faber & Faber advising their client data has been compromised during May. Yeah sure enough my card had been hacked & TSB fraud have stopped my card.
Looking forward to a good read anyhow.

[kriss]

I am a bit frightened to read it. I really want to. However I struggled (and failed) to read Phil Scraton's book because it was all a bit too raw. I am pretty well informed about what happened, why and how but all of the books are hard to read from an emotional angle. How does Ade's compare? I would like to read it.

red annie, it will tear your heart out, which are the exact words I used in the first paragraph of my own review of the book. But you ought to read it. Every supporter of every club ought to read it :

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.

[rakey_lfc]

Is this only available to buy online? I've waited till payday but don't want to wait for delivery of I can go out and find it in a shop!

[MichaelA]

I would think a decent book shop would have it in stock, Faber and Faber are a big publisher.

[Bluelagos]

Guardian bookshop seems to be cheaper than Amazon etc.   My copy took 48h hours.   Same with Kevin Sampson's book. 

[rakey_lfc]

I would think a decent book shop would have it in stock, Faber and Faber are a big publisher.

Thanks, will have a look today!

[Jinxsy]

red annie, it will tear your heart out, which are the exact words I used in the first paragraph of my own review of the book. But you ought to read it. Every supporter of every club ought to read it :

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.

Jesus.
Michael has just convinced me to order Hillsborough Voices and that was done with no small measure of trepidation - but now two in a day!

Of course I'll order the book and I'm thrilled that yet another of the great scribes on here has been published and that the praise is rightly being showered upon it, but I trust Kriss and his assessment, so this might have to be read in installments.

Well in to those involved.

[Speedy Molby]

Here's the Guardian review. They've renamed you in the url mate.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jun/01/and-the-sun-shines-now-hillsborough-aiden-tempany-review

[That Kennedy moment]

How typically Guardian of them. Great spot mate!

[Mumm-Ra]

MichaelA and kriss, you should post those reviews on Amazon

[driftinwest]

Here's the Guardian review. They've renamed you in the url mate.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jun/01/and-the-sun-shines-now-hillsborough-aiden-tempany-review

Its not a bad review by the guardian there and some interesting comments after it

[kriss]

MichaelA and kriss, you should post those reviews on Amazon

My review will go on Amazon tomorrow. They won't let me put it on today because the book has not been officially published/released yet.

[Hunts Cross]

An alternative title (avoiding an indirect s*n reference) could be ' A blind man, in a dark room, looking for a black cat that is not there' to quote our twat of a Prime Minister.

[Speedy Molby]

Its not a bad review by the guardian there and some interesting comments after it

Poor choice of words from the reviewer to describe the author as attending the inquest as an 'interested party' (l/c). That chapter details a blocked attempt to become an Interested Party (caps).
I wonder what Aiden thinks of that? 

[That Kennedy moment]

Poor choice of words from the reviewer to describe the author as attending the inquest as an 'interested party' (l/c). That chapter details a blocked attempt to become an Interested Party (caps).
I wonder what Aiden thinks of that? 

You're right. Strange that he used that phrase, and not at all helpful.

Still, I'm quite warming to Aiden...

[24/7]

You're right. Strange that he used that phrase, and not at all helpful.

Still, I'm quite warming to Aiden...

It suggests he totally fucking missed the point of the exchanges we made with the Coroner. He needs to re-read that chapter.

[24/7]

Order placed with Guardian Books - go here - https://bookshop.theguardian.com/and-the-sun-shines-now.html?utm_source=editoriallink&utm_medium=merch&utm_campaign=article - you can also add Kevin Sampson's "Hillsborough Voices" and Phil Scraton's updated "Hillsborough: The Truth" by adding to your basket from direct basket links at the bottom of the page linked above.

At some point in the transaction it will be pointed out to you that one of the books is not yet ready for release (it's Phil's, by the way, so you're pre-ordering it). If you want Ade's and Kevin's books now, select the "multiple delivery" option - it doesn't affect your chosen delivery method.

[rakey_lfc]

Got the book today from WHsmith's. Finding it difficult to put down now the kiddies are in bed.

[Yiannis]

I got an email saying my order has been dispatched. Knowing it's Greece we're talking about, I will probably have it in a month or so 

[24/7]

Grauniad delivered in under two days. Impressive.....but they misspelled my address

[Jonathan Hall ☆☆☆☆☆☆]

Grauniad delivered in under two days. Impressive.....but they misspelled my address

Dear 74/2,

Clifton Reynes

[MichaelA]

Another exceptional review of Adrian's book, this time from Frank Cottrell Boyce in today's Observer. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jun/05/and-the-sun-shines-now-hillsborough-review-adrian-tempany-frank-cottrell-boyce

[Speedy Molby]

Another exceptional review of Adrian's book, this time from Frank Cottrell Boyce in today's Observer. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jun/05/and-the-sun-shines-now-hillsborough-review-adrian-tempany-frank-cottrell-boyce

'The Hillsborough campaign naturally focused around the bereaved families. Their losses were the most devastating and the easiest to grasp. For survivors such as Tempany things were more complicated. Not only had they seen terrible things, they had been blamed for them. Their own post-traumatic stress, survivor’s guilt and personal griefs were exacerbated by the lies and accusations of the powerful.'

[24/7]

It's an absolutely belting review - thoroughly deserved praise - Ade has entered a pantheon of truly great writers.

Also, look at the inside rear cover of Ade's book and you'll see a very familiar kit. I'm betting his mum sent Faber that picture - but it's the description of how Ade has written about Hillsborough in some of the most esteemed publications in this country that stands out - as do the last few words - "And The Sun Shines Now is his first book."

I sincerely hope it will not be his last and I trust he shall enter the pantheon of truly great and prolific writers.

[Speedy Molby]

These bits also stood out:

'Tempany has added a final chapter taking us through those inquests. If like me you thought they were a way of formalising what everyone already knew, then this chapter makes shocking reading and gives the book a new urgency. From where the victims were sitting, the inquests were a close-run and painful thing.'

and

'Four pages in this chapter are worth the price of the whole book. They are Brenda Campbell’s QC cross-questioning of a sergeant who was on duty at the Leppings Lane end. It’s hard to know whether he is delusional or consciously clinging to a lie but if it weren’t for the context these pages would be a comedy classic.'

[24/7]

That's the thing, Tim. The scoreline might read 14-0 but that's a very flattering scoreline when you know how hard the training regime was and how tight the tactical planning needed to be. The nation should be outraged over the continued smearing that threatened to inflict the greatest ever miscarriage on families and survivors. It was a close run thing and it's good that people now have the chance to understand exactly what happened. Thanks to books and articles like Ade's - and a notable mention to Nick's excellent recent blog entries that also tells the story of the behind-the-scenes anxieties and how to face up to establishment-driven adversity.

[That Kennedy moment]

I am absolutely delighted with the review in the Observer.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce is someone I really admire, not least for the fact he wrote the script for Danny Boyle's brilliant opening ceremony of the 2012 olympics. He's brought poetry, humanity and style to that review, and to do that in such a relatively short space is some feat.

He clearly gets the spirit of the book, too. Some will, some won't.

[Speedy Molby]

Peter Marshall's review in the Financial Times.

https://next.ft.com/content/c7c094ea-2bcb-11e6-bf8d-26294ad519fc