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Attention All Shipping
Sitting at home listening to the shipping forecast can be a cosily reassuring experience. There’s no danger of a westerly gale eight, veering southwesterly increasing nine later (visibility poor) gusting through your average suburban living room, blowing the Sunday papers all over the place and startling the cat. Yet familiar though the sea areas are by name, few people give much thought to where they are or what they contain. Charlie Connelly wittily explores the places behind the voice, those mysterious regions whose names seem often to bear no relation to conventional geography.
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Bring Me Sunshine
A windswept, rain-soaked, sun-kissed, snow-capped guide to our weather. Charlie breezes through the lives of meteorological eccentrics, geniuses, rainmakers and cloud-busters and brings vividly to life great weather events from history.
And Did Those Feet
Charlie set out on a series of walks recreating famous historical journeys, retelling the stories and discovering who and what now inhabit these iconic routes. And Did Those Feet was a Radio 4 Book of the Week, read by Martin Freeman.
Our Man In Hibernia
Charlie thought he had a good idea of what Ireland was all about. He was, after all, practically Irish. Our Man in Hibernia follows his adventures among the Irish. Immersing himself in Ireland’s language, music and literature.
In Search of Elvis
Elvis Presley has become an even greater icon since his death in 1977. Charlie Connelly sets off on a journey to discover what makes Elvis so significant today and how his spirit is kept alive half a century after he changed popular culture for ever.
the forgotten soldier
Charlie Connelly’s First World War memoir of his great uncle, Edward Connelly, an ordinary boy sent to fight in a war the likes of which the world had never seen. But this is not just his story; it’s the story of all the young forgotten soldiers who fought and died for their country.
STAMPING GROUNDS
Travelling to all of Liechenstein’s qualifying matches, Charlie Connelly examines what motivates a team to take the field dressed proudly in the shirts of Liechtenstein despite the knowledge that they are, with notably few exceptions, in for a damn good hiding.
Gilbert: the last years of wc grace
Written in the year that marked the centenary of Grace’s death, Charlie Connelly charts the final years of his life, from his fiftieth birthday celebrations in 1898 to his death at the age of 67 in 1915, through the eyes of Grace himself.
elk stopped play
There are few parts of Wisden Cricketers Almanack that embody the magic and appeal of the game more than Cricket Round the World. Elk Stopped Play is a carefully-chosen selection of stories from twenty years of one of Wisdens most-loved sections.
Constance Street
Don’t be fooled by the cover – this isn’t just a book for your nan. It’s the story of my great-grandparents Harry and Nellie Greenwood (who also part-inspired Attention All Shipping) and the remarkable street on which they lived between the wars: Constance Street in Silvertown at the heart of London’s royal docks.
London Fields: A journey through football’s metroland
The end of the millennium proved to be a boom time for London football. Charlie Connelly uses the metropolis to examine the state of the game at the turn of the century, from Charlton’s mooted move to the Millennium Dome to the state of the pitches on Hackney Marshes. .
I just Can’t Help Believing
“Relegation helps to keep football sane”, says Charlie Connelly at the start of this engrossing study of the downside to a competitive system. He cites the recent rise, fall, and at time of writing rise again, of free-spending Middlesborough to persuasively show that, sometimes, money just isn’t enough.
Spirit High And Passion Pure
European football is growing to gargantuan proportions. The best club sides appear on TV almost every week. Yet what lies beyond the faux-classical strains of the Champions League theme music? Is modern European football just big business. or is the game a vehicle for passion, spirit and national identity?
Many Miles… A Season In The Life Of Charlton Athletic
A diary of Charlton’s finest season for nearly half a century, featuring in-depth interviews with players and key figures behind the scenes
chapter and verse: joy division, new order and me
Bernard Sumner had first got in touch with Charlie Connelly a few years ago after he’d read and enjoyed Attention All Shipping and since then they’ve become good friends. Charlie was delighted and honoured when Bernard asked him if he’d help him write his autobiography.
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A Letter From Home, February 1918
A few years ago I discovered a great-uncle I'd never known about had been killed a week before the end of the First World War, aged nineteen. Somehow he'd slipped entirely from the family narrative; even my dad didn't know he'd even existed and this was his own...
Why today is NOT the 150th anniversary of the shipping forecast
Now, you know me, any chance to say hats off to the shipping forecast and I’m all over it like Donald Trump’s golf slacks over his ginormous behind. Yet today is an exception. There are stories in the news hailing this day as the 150th anniversary of the...
The Silvertown Explosion, 19th January 1917
One hundred years ago today, at 6.52pm, the Brunner Mond munitions factory in the Silvertown district of east London blew up. It was an explosion heard as far afield as Cambridge, Salisbury and Southampton and killed at least 73 people. My great-grandparents had a...
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