Salaam Stanley Matthews - Tapa blanda

* 'The gentlemanly, other- worldly figure of Matthews serves as a fitting metaphor for a vanished time, of false certainties and of prejudice, admittedly, but also of innocence and love of a game for the game's sake' TLS * 'Fascinating recreation of the experience of being a small brown boy in the very white world of England half a century ago' Richard Williams, Guardian * 'Not just a book about football but about the English way of life and what happened when the English way of life met the Indian way of life' New World * A simple, unaffected tale, a little gem in fact' Asian News

"Salaam Stanley Matthews" is the story of a unique encounter between England and India. Subrata Dasgupta was six years old when his parents came to Britain from Calcutta in 1950. In his affectionate portrait of a Britain that seems as foreign to us now as it was to him then, he recalls what it was like growing up in Nottingham and Derby in the 1950s: holidays in Blackpool, the trials of the dreaded Eleven-Plus and the first stirrings of rock and roll. Above all it is the story of one small Indian boy's devotion to the greatest footballer of the day, Stanley Matthews - who to Subrata Dasgupta represented all that was best about his new country.