Award-winning Hamilton’s ‘gripping’ book on 1966 World Cup goes to riverrun

Duncan Hamilton’s Answered Prayers: England and the 1966 World Cup has been signed by riverrun. 

Publisher Jon Riley acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Gráinne Fox at the United Talent Agency, with publication scheduled for 31st August 2023.

The publisher describes the book as “a gripping account of English football’s greatest achievement and the failures that followed it, written by one of our most garlanded sportswriters".

It adds: “Hamilton charts the rise of England manager Alf Ramsey and his revolutionary reinvention of the national side; his ruthless construction of a team to win the 1966 tournament; the moment of glory; the refusal of the football authorities to build on success; the betrayal of Ramsey and the afterlives of the players, which taken together almost act as a microcosm of our narrative of national decline.”

Hamilton is the only writer to have won three William Hill Sports Book of the Year Prizes. He has been nominated on a further four occasions. He has also claimed two British Sports Book Awards and is the first writer to have won the Wisden Cricket Book of the Year on three occasions.

He said: “After watching a replay of the World Cup during the first lockdown, I saw  the whole sweep of the World Cup story in an entirely differently light. I’d previously taken the thing for granted. That’s why my book, essentially, begins in the 1940s and ends at the start of the present year.”

Riley said: “Duncan Hamilton’s genius is to tell the most famous story in our sporting history and make it new, filling it with colour, characters and emotion, as only he can.”