Football V Literature

In 2014 Nottingham was named the first UK City of football. A year later, Nottingham became a UNESCO City of Literature, a permanent title. But which accolade do we most deserve? That question was answered at last Sunday’s Ey Up Duck event at the Canal House.

I presented a strong argument for each title. Kicking off with football I began with Forest’s first great player Sam Weller Widdowson who came up with the first formation, invented shins pads, helped introduce the whistle, refereed the first match with goal nets (the first player to put the ball in the back of the net was a Hyson Green man playing for Everton), facilitated the first night matches (using gas light then electricity) and founded the amateur cup. Cloughie was then given the full ‘top one’ treatment before the focus shifted to Nottingham’s shaping of Italian football, our current obsession with the game, and the rise of girls' football in the city.

As for literature, I explored how our radical writers have changed the world with their words, looking at how we influenced the American constitution and the UN Declaration of Human Rights, how we presented the first coherent theory of evolution, how the Chatterley trial impacted on censorship, and how working-class characters have been represented. Writing of many forms was highlighted including the role our journalists, scriptwriters and poets have played in making us a city of literature, and how we have led the way in children’s reading with the first children’s library, Mee's The Children’s Newspaper and Children's Encyclopaedia, Trease, Howitt, and our current writers and plans for the future.

The audience were then asked the question, are we a city of football or a city of literature? and a vote was undertaken. The result was a resounding win for literature with about 75% of the audience deciding that Nottingham is a City of Literature.