The magnificent story of a writer's lifelong obsession with his city and its football club. When 5-year-old Michael Chaplin landed in a strange city of ships in the late 1950s, he looked in vain for something that would anchor him to it, make him feel at home. Then, one Saturday afternoon, it came: the roar of a crowd, and a football team to support. Young Michael became an avid Newcastle United fan, and has remained one-if sometimes disenchanted-for over sixty years. In this football memoir with a difference, the celebrated playwright and screenwriter tells the story of his six-decade love affair with the club, each chapter recreating an iconic Newcastle match: the players who graced the game, the managers in the dug-out, and the backdrop outside the stadium-both the changing face of Newcastle, and the ups and downs of Michael's own life and career. This vivid, thoughtful and entertaining book is an absolute must-read for all Newcastle United supporters, and indeed-given that the club is often described as everyone's second favourite-for football fans everywhere...

The magnificent story of a writer’s lifelong obsession with his city and its football club. When 5-year-old Michael Chaplin landed in a strange city of ships in the late 1950s, he looked in vain for something that would anchor him to it, make him feel at home. Then, one Saturday afternoon, it came: the roar of a crowd, and a football team to support. Young Michael became an avid Newcastle United fan, and has remained one–if sometimes disenchanted–for over sixty years. In this football memoir with a difference, the celebrated playwright and screenwriter tells the story of his six-decade love affair with the club, each chapter recreating an iconic Newcastle match: the players who graced the game, the managers in the dug-out, and the backdrop outside the stadium–both the changing face of Newcastle, and the ups and downs of Michael’s own life and career. This vivid, thoughtful and entertaining book is an absolute must-read for all Newcastle United supporters, and indeed–given that the club is often described as everyone’s second favourite–for football fans everywhere…

Sid Chaplin was an acclaimed author of novels, essays and short stories, one of the finest writers working in the North in the 20th century and a great influence on a later generation of writers who followed his example, including John Braine, Melvyn Bragg and Alan Plater.The son of a miner who became a pitman himself, his early work brilliantly and tenderly chronicled the mining life he observed around him, in the villages in which he grew up by the River Wear in County Durham.To mark the centenary of his birth in 1916, this new collection of stories, essays and poems features the very best of this work, capturing the culture which more or less created the modern North-East but which is now lost forever. In between these pieces his son Michael Chaplin traces his father's early life and the inspiring story of how in the face of many obstacles he became a successful writer. In a concluding essay he returns with the photographer Karen Atkinson to the three villages which meant so much to his father to discover their story since he left them and create an affectionate evocation of landscape, people and place.

Calvin's 1559 Institutes is one of the most important works of theology that emerged at a pivotal time in Europe's history. As a movement, Calvinism has often been linked to the emerging features of modernity, especially to capitalism, rationalism, disenchantment, and the formation of the modern sovereign state. In this book, Michelle Sanchez argues that a closer reading of the 1559 Institutes recalls some of the tensions that marked Calvinism's emergence among refugees, and ultimately opens new ways to understand the more complex ethical and political legacy of Calvinism. In conversation with theorists of practice and signification, she advocates for reading the Institutes as a pedagogical text that places the reader in the world as the domain in which to actively pursue the 'knowledge of God and ourselves' through participatory uses of divine revelation. Through this lens, she reconceives Calvin's understanding of sovereignty and how it works in relation to the embodied reader. Sanchez also critically examines Calvin's teaching on providence and the incarnation in conversation with theorists of political theology and modernity who emphasize the importance of those very doctrines.

Chris Mullin's witty and irreverent take on contemporary politics adapted for the stage, reflecting three worlds during a time of crisis and change - the febrile political village of Westminster, the flash points of Africa which he toured as a minister, and the fragile community he served as an MP.Fast paced and very funny... Blending gossip, insight and details of the frustrations of ministerial and backbench life alike... an] exhilarating adaptation...I cannot recommend it too highly. 4* Michael Billington - GuardianAdapted by: Michael ChaplinTotal Cast:5

Charlie Chaplin grew up in and around the music hall. His parents, aunt and their friends all earned their precarious livings on the stage and Chaplin himself started out his career touring music halls with a dance troupe. His experiences of the culture of the music hall were a major influence, shaping his style of acting and the films he made, most famously Limelight, which tells the story of a failing variety performer and which evoked painful memories of his own past. Chaplin was horrified to see how performers' lives were ruined when their audience turned against them and he was relieved to exchange the stresses of live performance for screen comedy. Barry Anthony here tells the story of the lives and careers of Chaplin's family and their music-hall circle - from 'dashing' Eva Lester to the great Fred Karno and from Chaplin's parents Hannah Hill and Charles Chaplin to 'The Great Calvero' himself. He reveals the difficult and often-tragic lives of London's variety community in the late-Victorian and Edwardian years, a time of great change in the music hall and entertainment scene, and in doing so sheds important new light on the inspiration behind Chaplin's genius, providing a fascinatingly fresh perspective on this popular cultural icon of the twentieth century.