Jonathan Wilson
Biography
Jonathan Wilson is a writer and broadcaster. He has published a novel and twelve non-fiction books about football including a history of tactics, Inverting the Pyramid; a history of the Argentinian game, Angels With Dirty Faces; a history of Hungarian football between 1916 and 56, The Names Heard Long Ago; and a biography of Jack and Bobby Charlton, Two Brothers.
He founded and edits the football quarterly The Blizzard, is a columnist for the Guardian and World Soccer, writes for Unherd. He has been named FSA Football Writer of the Year a record four times.
A regular on the Football Weekly podcast, Wilson is also co-host of It Was What It Was: the Football History Podcast and was also one of gang of seven who founded Libero podcast. He has given lectures and spoken at conferences in the UK, US, Germany, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Turkey and Hungary.
Latest News
After speaking to the Black Country Healthcare NHS Trust about José Leandro Andrade to mark Black History Week, Jonathan Wilson spoke about Latin America at the World Cup to a gathering at Canning House in London. Among those in attendance was Uruguay's ambassador to the UK Luis Bermúdez (pictured here, left; on the right is the former Lib Dem minister for Europe and the Americas, the CEO of Canning House, Jeremy Browne).
Jonathan Wilson has recently finished filming a documentary in Argentina. Featuring scenes in Puerto Madryn and Buenos Aires, it traces River Plate's rise from relegation in 2011 through two Copa Libertadores successes to the present day as they stand with a proudly modern stadium and the highest average attendance in the world.
A new series of snippets of football history from around the world, Wilson's World: Postcards from the Past, has launched on Substack and YouTube. Early clips have featured the first ever international, played in Glasgow in 1872; the mural celebrating Tony Yeboah in Frankfurt; the career of Allan Simonsen; and the FAI offices in Dublin where Jack Charlton manager was appointed Ireland manager in chaotic circumstances. Subscribe now!
Jonathan Wilson's new history of the World Cup, The Power and the Glory, has been released in both the UK and the USA. The historian Tom Holland described it as "epic in scope, awesomely rich in detail, and compulsively entertaining", while Duncan Hamilton spoke of "an outstanding book by a truly outstanding writer" and David Kynaston described it as "unfailingly lucid and objective". Order here.
The first six episodes of an exciting new project have launched on YouTube. Written by Jonathan Wilson and created by Tifo Football, The Entire History of Football begins with a look at the origins of the game, and how a set of laws drawn up in a London pub in 1863 became the basis for the most popular sport in the world. Watch here.
Subsequent episodes take the game up to the Second World War.
Contact
For all queries, please send an email to infojonawils@gmail.com.
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For book enquiries contact David Luxton on david@davidluxtonassociates.co.uk.