The Goalkeeper"s History of Britain is a comic blend of the personal and political seen through the eyes of former BBC Foreign Correspondent and amateur ‘keeper Peter Chapman. Based on the whimsical premise that Britain"s character as an island nation finds its sporting embodiment in the shape and stance of the man between the uprights Chapman"s chronicle of the 20th century weaves a funny and charming tapestry of personal recollection and saloon-bar history lesson. He argues that the game itself has waged war against the goalie--from the days when a striker could bundle keeper and ball across the goal line and score to the indignities of the passback rule--and that the best of us is found in our struggles to "keep a clean sheet". It"s a vision of the century which sees the siege of the Imperial mindset mirrored in the fortunes of the England football team and those individuals who kept goal--from Reg Matthews to David Seaman, each successive lofty yeoman a totem to the British Way of Life. Chapman has written an intelligent study of the roots and function of identity, but at no point do the scale of his ideas to swamp his comic instinct or finely developed sense of the absurd--this is a readable and amusing take on the meaning of being number 1. --Alex Hankin