Launch Event: Jonathan Wilson in conversation with Simon Kuper
The Power and the Glory / World Cup Fever

Thursday 28 May, 7.00pm
Colchester United JobServe Community Stadium, United Way, Colchester, CO4 5UP

Ahead of the FIFA World Cup 2026, we are thrilled to be launching this year’s Essex Book Festival at Colchester Community Stadium with two masters of football writing.

Author, sports journalist and broadcaster Jonathan Wilson’s The Power and the Glory is the definitive history of the World Cup, for the first time exploring the tournament’s socio-political impact across the globe as well as the goals and scandals that keep us all gripped.

Award-winning columnist and podcaster Simon Kuper is among the vanishingly small number of writers who have attended every World Cup since 1990. In World Cup Fever he shares what he has learned about the ‘Beautiful Game’ from nine consecutive World Cups.

Join us for a highly entertaining and illuminating discussion about the most watched sporting event on the planet.

Tickets: £12 / £10 concessions (students, under 27s and unwaged)
Box Office: essexbookfestival.org.uk or Mercury Theatre 01206 573948

 

Event Information

💬 The event will include an audience Q&A session.
🖊️ After the event there will be an opportunity to get books signed by the authors.
📚 Our bookseller will have copies of the books available to purchase on the night.
🍺 There will be a selection of soft and alcoholic refreshments available to buy from the bar.
🚗 The venue has ample free parking on site. Please register your car number plate using the tablets at the reception desk.
♿ The venue is wheelchair accessible. There are disabled facilities on site.
🪑 Seats are unallocated.

 

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Jonathan Wilson

 

Jonathan Wilson is the editor of the Blizzard and a freelance writer for the Guardian, World Soccer and Sports Illustrated. He is the author of twelve books, including Inverting the Pyramid: The History of Football Tactics, Behind the Curtain: Football in Eastern Europe, Angels with Dirty Faces: The Footballing History of Argentina, The Barcelona Legacy, The Names Heard Long Ago and Two Brothers.

 

The Power and the Glory: A New History of the World Cup
by Jonathan Wilson

The definitive history of the World Cup, for the first time exploring the tournament’s socio-political impact across the globe as well as the goals and scandals that keep us all gripped.

The football World Cup is the most watched sporting event on the planet. It has become a global obsession and has been running for almost a century. Yet there is no comprehensive history of the tournament: based on fresh interviews and meticulously researched this book will change that.

By 1930, football had outgrown the Olympic Games. A new competition, run by Fifa, would take international football to the next level. After a shambolic start to the first cup in Uruguay – an incomplete stadium, shoddy refereeing and physios accidentally injuring players – the thrilling final saw Uruguay take on Argentina, beating them 4-2.

From those chaotic beginnings grew the modern World Cup, a cultural phenomenon that draws the world together like nothing else.

There has never been a comprehensive history of the World Cup that has considered not only the matches and goals, the players and coaches, the tales of scandal and genius, the haggling and skulduggery of the bidding process, but has also placed the tournaments within a socio-political framework. The story of the World Cup is also the story of the world; this book tells its definitive history.

‘Meticulously researched and well-organised – an informative account of how the World Cup became the global event it is today.’
– Jamie Carragher

‘Jonathan Wilson is a master at telling football’s greatest ever stories…Breathtaking. Wilson’s eye for detail and his elegant writing brings the World Cup to life like no other book on the topic I have ever read’
– Elis James

‘A history of the World Cup that is also a four yearly temperature check on the history of the entire world. Epic in scope, awesomely rich in detail, and compulsively entertaining.’
– Tom Holland

‘An outstanding book by a truly outstanding writer’
– Duncan Hamilton

‘So much of what we know of football’s history we know thanks to Wilson…the game is lucky to have him’
– Simon Kuper

 

Order a hardback copy of the book from bookshop.org.

Pre-order a paperback copy of the book from bookshop.org – released on 7 May 2026

 

Simon Kuper

Simon Kuper is a British author and journalist for the Financial Times. Kuper was born in Uganda of South African parents in 1969, and moved to the Netherlands as a child. He studied History and German at Oxford University, and attended Harvard University as a Kennedy Scholar. He has written for the Observer, The Times and the Guardian, and also writes regularly for Dutch newspapers. He lives in Paris with his family.

 

World Cup Fever: A Footballing Journey in Nine Tournaments
by Simon Kuper

 

The football World Cup is the biggest sporting competition on Earth – a chance every four years for the greatest players to win international glory, and a month-long media spectacle that’s watched by an audience of billions.

But the tournament has changed beyond recognition since the inaugural event in Montevideo, Uruguay, in July 1930. What was once a semi-professional meeting beset by haphazard play has evolved to become a game of multinational buyouts, dubious ethics and questionable aims – and the new era of football has much to tell us about the globalised world.

Simon Kuper is among the vanishingly small number of writers who have attended every World Cup since 1990. The World at My Feet is his journey to find the heart of football, through the nine tournaments he’s experienced first-hand – from watching matches in half-empty stands during Italia 90, a tournament that at times felt like a village fete, to witnessing the French triumph at home in 1998, South Africa’s national dream in 2010 and the troubling legacy of Qatar 2022.

Told on the pitch and in the stands, and in the pubs, front rooms and on the streets, this is the story of how football has changed the world.

Order a hardback copy of the book from bookshop.org.