Get Free Shipping on orders over $89
Fanzine : The story of football's alternative press - Daniel Gray

Fanzine

The story of football's alternative press

By: Daniel Gray

Hardcover | 10 November 2026

At a Glance

Hardcover


$52.75

or 4 interest-free payments of $13.19 with

 or 

Available: 10th November 2026

Preorder. Will ship when available.

A history of how fanzines redefined football and amplified supporters' voices.

When the matchday many were treated as the hooligan few, football supporters didn't react with violence or vandalism, but with typewriters, staple guns and Tippex. The fanzine movement of the 1980s transformed a bleak time into a hopeful one, re-humanising spectators in the process.

Producing DIY zines and selling them outside football grounds from Middlesborough to Torquay, supporters offered authenticity, humour and criticism written from the terraces and not the press box, with truths that their clubs and the footballing authorities found uncomfortable.

From Heysel and Hillsborough to anti-racism and the women's game, this book is a people's history of football and wider Britain in the late 20th century. It is an alternative version of our national game's narrative, encompassing themes that still matter now from social class and club ownership to the dubious nature of pie contents.

Through exhaustive archival research, interviews with those who were there, nostalgic illustrations and Gray's familiar vivid writing style, the book documents why football fanzines mattered so much. Whether you support Manchester City, Hibernian, Bournemouth or one of many other clubs, big or small, the club is sure to have been honoured by a funnily named fanzine.

More in Post War 20th Century History after 1945

Retro Women : The Evolution of Women - Juanita Dodige

RRP $35.00

$27.75

21%
OFF
The Coming Storm : Power, Conflict and Warnings from History - Odd Arne Westad
Entitled : The Rise and Fall of the House of York - Andrew Lownie

RRP $37.99

$19.00

50%
OFF
Elsewhere : The story of UK skateboarding 1987-2002 - Neil Macdonald
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine - Ilan Pappe

RRP $26.99

$22.99

15%
OFF
Persepolis : The Story of an Iranian Childhood - Marjane Satrapi

RRP $39.99

$26.75

33%
OFF
From Third World to First : Singapore and the Asian Economic Boom - Lee Kuan Yew
Elizabeth II : In Private. In Public. The Inside Story. - Robert Hardman
The Prosecutor : One Man's Battle to Bring Nazis to Justice - Jack Fairweather
Secret Warriors : British Submarines in the Cold War - Dr Paul Brown
Yesterday : The United Kingdom from Thatcher to Covid - Brian Harrison
Who Dares Wins : Britain, 1979-1982 - Dominic Sandbrook

RRP $26.99

$20.75

23%
OFF
Chernobyl Prayer : Voices from Chernobyl - Svetlana Alexievich

RRP $26.99

$22.75

16%
OFF
Exit Stalin : The Soviet Union as a Civilization, 1953-1991 - Mark B. Smith
Operation Pedestal : The Fleet that Battled to Malta 1942 - Max Hastings
Quiet Protest : A new history of activism during the Vietnam War - Effie Karageorgos