And it is the clubs that were long since buried, even in 1958, that make the book so resonant. So were Durham City, Nelson and Stalybridge Celtic. There was even a town which now has no League clubs that once had two. Yet this week, barring an improbable set of results, a football club called Rushden and Diamonds will be promoted to what some of us still call the Fourth Division of the Football League. Rushden, you may need to be told, is an old Northamptonshire shoe town.
Writers can only be that cruel about their home town.
And nothing is happening in Rushden, even now. This is a town with no horses at all, possibly because they were all rendered at the animal products factory that traditionally stank the place out. Locals call the town Artlenock and don't ask me why. Well, up to a point. The towns in Churchill's book are there because ordinary but determined folk formed football clubs and made them successful.