England Away
England Away is the third novel by British author John King, published by Jonathan Cape in 1999.
The final part of the loose Football Factory trilogy, it follows characters from The Football Factory and Headhunters novels who come together as they head into Europe for an England football match against Germany in Berlin.
The main character, Tommy Johnson, narrates their passage through Amsterdam to Berlin, while back in a London pub Bill Farrell, from an older generation, remembers the similar route he traced as a soldier in the second world war, confronting a horrific war memory in the process. Both Farrell and Johnson face up to their own demons, with very different results.
In an interview [1] with the writer Jay Slayton-Joslin, King said of England Away: 'We are all the result of those who went before us, and I’m interested in the continuation and expansion of our culture.'
After the publication of England Away, King shifted his attentions away from football culture to other aspects of white working class society in novels such as Human Punk and White Trash.