Football Fever and other celebrations

As England celebrates an improbable run of success in the World Cup, the British Library publishes tomorrow a novel that is surely the best of all classic mysteries with a football setting, Leonard Gribble's The Arsenal Stadium Mystery. Great timing! I'm delighted to see this book back in print, and even though I'm not an Arsenal fan, it's an enjoyable fair puzzle mystery that was turned into an equally entertaining film.

England's unexpectedly convincing win against Sweden came as a happy extra birthday present on Saturday. I just got back home in time for the match, following a quick trip to London to watch Burt Bacharach in concert at the Royal Festival Hall. In keeping with the mood, the great man wore an England football shirt throughout. It was a wonderful evening, quite well reviewed here, and we were treated to three new songs, including a very good one that has never been publicly performed before. The standing ovation was utterly deserved, after more than two hours of non-stop melody. Few 90 year olds could compete with this stunning performance, that's for sure.

After the match on Saturday we headed to North Wales for an enjoyable dinner at a nice hotel before on Sunday I achieved a long held ambition. When I was a small boy, we often went on holiday to North Wales, and I became fascinated by an island off Anglesey called Puffin Island. For many years, rats took over from the sea birds, but now they are gone and wildlife boat trips to Puffin Island from the historic town of Beaumaris are available.

I've wanted to take such a trip for a while, and the perfect weather yesterday made it a memorable occasion. It was fascinating to see at close quarters the island which intrigued me so much when I was small. There were seals, as well as innumerable birds. And the puffins are back - it was fun to see them flying around. All in all, a marvellous weekend.  

Forgotten Book - The Arsenal Stadium Mystery

Football seldom features in Golden Age detective fiction. Hue and Cry by Bruce Hamilton, which features a football player who goes on the run after killing someone is a very rare exception. But in 1939, Leonard R. Gribble had the audacious idea of setting one of his Inspector Slade mysteries against the background of a real football club, one of the most famous in the world - Arsenal F.C.

Gribble was a writer with considerable commercial nous. He found support from the club, whose players and manager feature in the story, and The Arsenal Stadium Mystery was quickly filmed, by Thorold Dickinson, with Leslie Banks -at that time a very popular actor - playing the part of Slade. I watched and reviewed the film nearly nine years ago, and now the time has come to talk about the novel.

The setting, as the title makes clear, is Highbury (Arsenal only moved to the Emirates Stadium in recent times) and a match between Arsenal and a leading team of amateurs called The Trojans. During the game, one of the Trojans' players, a right-half (ah, those were the days) called Doyce, is taken ill and dies. It soon emerges that the cause of death is aconite poisoning. He has been murdered.

This is a highly readable fair play detective novel, and although I figured out the solution in good time, I enjoyed the story, not least as a reminder of how much the game has changed since the book was written. My copy is one of my most prized items in my personal collection - it was signed by the team and manager in 1942. One of those who signed, and who features in the story, is a player called Cliff Bastin, on whom my father - a useful amateur footballer in his day - modelled himself. I suspect he'd have been amused to learn that, even though I'm an avid Manchester City fan, I went to some lengths to track this copy down.