Promised Land

Absorbing, compelling and very personal. Brilliant

David Peace

This "Northern love story" has as the objects of desire both the city of Leeds and its football club. Pretty often, neither attracts much affection beyond the West Riding-but Clavane digs deep and looks hard in order to explain the forces that shaped both town and team.

Independent

A love song to the North, and all the contradictions and little irritations about the region that make us love it more"

Yorkshire Post

Promised Land is both an anatomy of the peculiar mass psychology of Leeds United's support (shaped by the team's multiple failures in big games) and a paean to Clavane's home town, which once nurtured a thriving Jewish subculture.

New Statesman

Promised Land' distinguishes itself from your average football book with a framing device evoking the Exodus. This enables Clavane to elegantly and evocatively explore his own Jewishness and the influence of the Israeli diaspora on his beloved football team as well as offering a potted history of the temper and temperament of the city itself ... Clavane's vision is far from gloomy - Leeds has a knack for self-sabotage but it's eminently capable of reinvention too

Timeout

A hard-edged and searingly-honest insight into why we all bother investing so much in 11 men every weekend.

Loaded

The football book of the year

Sunday Times

Sports writing at its very best

Daily Telegraph

'Engaging and ambitious - crafted from the author's own personal story, passions and obsessions'

Esquire

'Absolutely brilliant'

Independent on Sunday

'Compelling...Glorious...Has an appeal far beyond football'

Guardian

'Sports book of the year'

Radio 2

'Original, passionate, thought-provoking and hugely enjoyable'

The Times