Engaging chronicle of British skinheads

Skinheads. By John King, Jonathan Cape, €17.75

Perhaps it had to do with pre-millennial tension, the advent of Blair’s calcified Cool Britannia or the media’s wicked, mischievous need to rile Middle England to the hilt.

Either way, the public’s preoccupation - nay, obsession - with football hooliganism reached something of a fever pitch in the 1990s,with many of its main tattooed, skinheaded protagonists viewed as some sort of dastardly, yet still slightly exotic, ...