Harry Pearson - author profile
Articles by Harry Pearson include To Play Ball, FAIR PLAY and many more!
Harry Pearson is the author of twelve works of non-fiction. The Far Corner – A Mazy Dribble through North-East Football, was runner-up for the William Hill Prize and has been named as one of the 50 Greatest Sports Books of All Time by both The Observer and The Times. He wrote a weekly sports column in The Guardian from 1996 to 2012, and won the 2011 MCC/Cricket Society Prize for his book about Northern club cricket, Slipless in Settle. He won the MCC/Cricket Society Prize for a second time in 2017 with Connie, his biography of Learie Constantine. His latest book No Pie, No Priest was long-listed for the William Hill Prize and covers Britain’s less celebrated sports from cheese-rolling to quoits via shinty and aunt sally.
Articles so far:
To Play Ball - Playing Ball is an expression used to imply willing cooperation, even though playing with a ball involves bouncing, throwing, kicking, punching and striking it.
Playing the Man and not the Ball; a dodgy tactic at best
Prohibited Play and Outlawed Games - Harry Pearson reveals how football and other ‘vain games of no value’ once threatened to unravel the very fabric of British society.
FAIR PLAY - Harry Pearson reviews An English Tradition? The History and Significance of Fair Play by Jonathan Duke-Evans.