Book description
Since 1888, Rangers and Celtic football clubs have been locked into an
intense and frequently explosive rivalry: Rangers the product of West
Scotland's Protestant establishment, Celtic the team founded to raise
money for the Catholic underclass of Glasgow. On 2 January 2010 the two
teams met in the Old Firm's New Year Derby, a fixture that had been
banned for ten years because of the trouble it brought with it. Richard
Wilson puts that game at the centre of a book which delves into the
history and widens out to the cultural resonance of the fixture within
Scotland. Starting as the fans begin to arrive in Glasgow, and ending as
the long night following the match stretches out ahead, Wilson talks to
the fans, the players, the backroom staff, the referee, the ferry staff,
the stewards and the paramedics to create a panoramic view of a cultural
institution. It addresses the role football plays in working-class life,
the social aspects of the game and why it is part of its surroundings in
a way that no other sport is. Inside the Divide is a mix of close-up
observation and big-picture thinking, with insight, understanding and
depth.
