Bill Buford stood in crowds that turned into something other than crowds, and the audiobook of Among the Thugs, which he narrates himself across nearly ten hours, is the record of what he found there. Buford was the editor of Granta magazine when he began spending time with English football hooligans in the 1980s, a period when fan violence in and around grounds had reached a scale that alarmed government and the sport's governing bodies alike. What he discovered was not simply men doing destructive things. It was something more unsettling: the specific conditions under which ordinary men discovered what they were capable of when anonymity and permission converged.
The book invokes George Orwell and Hunter Thompson as comparison points in its own description, and both references hold up. Buford has Orwell's capacity for submitting himself to an environment and reporting from inside it without the detached superiority that destroys immersion journalism. He has Thompson's willingness to implicate himself in what he is documenting rather than maintaining the fiction of pure observation. The result is a book that is uncomfortable precisely because it refuses to give the reader a safe position from which to observe.
The Verdict, Briefly
The intellectual core of the book is its account of how crowd violence becomes self-sustaining. Buford does not present English football hooliganism as a psychological disorder in specific individuals or as the product of a criminal subculture that could be addressed by removing its ringleaders. He presents it as an emergent property of crowd conditions: the anonymity of the mass, the permission granted by shared transgression, the specific intensity of the stadium environment. His argument is that the capacity for what happened at grounds across England in that decade lived in the crowd itself rather than only in its most violent members, and that argument is both disturbing and difficult to dismiss.
One reviewer noted the book raises questions about fan behavior and larger social reactions to antisocial behavior, and this captures the book's refusal to offer easy conclusions. Buford finds the specific social and economic conditions that produced the hooligan culture, but he does not reduce the violence to those conditions. He also finds the absurdity, humor, and human specificity in the men he spent time with, which is what a less honest journalist might have suppressed for fear of appearing to excuse the behavior. The combination of humor and horror is deliberate and is what makes the audiobook so destabilizing to listen to.
A reviewer who found the book gets too philosophical in places is raising a real point. Buford is drawn to theorizing about crowd psychology and the anthropology of mass violence, and these sections occasionally pull him away from the immediate reportage that is the book's greatest strength. But even when the theoretical passages feel digressive, the questions they raise extend well beyond football and well beyond England in the 1980s.
Buford reading his own work is the right choice for this material, and not only for the obvious reason that the voice matches the content. Self-narration here serves the book's argumentative integrity. The reporter who was present in those crowds is the same person delivering the account, and the absence of a mediating voice means you hear the discomfort and dark fascination of the experience in the same measure Buford wrote with. His delivery is measured and controlled, finding the comic registers and the genuinely frightened ones without overperforming either.
The pacing over nine-and-a-half hours serves the book's character work. Barmy Bernie, Daft Donald, and Steamin' Sammy are not just names in a sociological study; by the time events escalate around them, they are specific people whose histories and personalities Buford has developed with patience. That patience is what makes the violence land with its full weight rather than as spectacle.
Before You Commit to Among the Thugs
The Turin riot sequence during the 1990 World Cup is the most technically accomplished piece of writing in the book. Buford reconstructs a situation that moved from football atmosphere to genuine mass terror with a reporter's precision for the specific gesture and the telling detail. Pay attention to how he positions himself within the event: not as a hero, not as a bystander, but as someone who made choices under pressure and is being honest about what those choices reveal. This is where the book earns its comparison to the best war journalism.
Also worth sustained attention is the book's implicit argument about class, geography, and what English football hooliganism was actually expressing. Buford traces the specific communities these men came from and the specific ways mainstream English culture had excluded and diminished them. He does not make the violence heroic, but he makes it intelligible, and that intelligibility is more uncomfortable than simple condemnation would have been.
Who Will Get the Most From It
Readers drawn to serious immersion journalism will find this audiobook essential. Football history listeners interested in the culture of English grounds in the 1980s will find it both illuminating and disturbing in equal measure. Listeners who engage with sports writing as social and cultural analysis rather than game coverage will find the audiobook rewards careful, uncomfortable attention throughout its full runtime.
This title is not appropriate for listeners seeking football entertainment or celebration of the sport's culture. The violence is graphic in places, and the moral discomfort Buford engineers is entirely intentional. The audiobook is also demanding in its philosophical sections, which require active engagement rather than passive listening. Approach it with those expectations in place and it is one of the most distinctive sports audiobooks available in English.
Quick Take
- Performance: Bill Buford reads his own work, and the effect is significant; his journalist's voice carries the discomfort and dark fascination of the original experience in ways a third-party narrator could not replicate.
- What it covers: crowd psychology, English football culture, the seduction of violence
- Feel: Tense and unsettling, with a black humor that makes the horror more effective
- Our call: One of the most uncomfortably compelling pieces of sports immersion journalism ever written, and Buford's self-narration makes the audiobook the definitive way to experience it.
Common Questions
Does the Among the Thugs audiobook include the Turin riot and the 1990 World Cup incidents?
Both domestic and international incidents are covered. Buford's embeds include Manchester United away fixtures across England and Europe, and the 1990 World Cup in Italy features prominently, including the Turin riots. These international incidents are among the most viscerally reported sections in the entire audiobook.
Is this audiobook suitable for listeners with no particular interest in football?
Yes. While football provides the setting, the book's core subject is crowd psychology, the sociology of male violence, and the experience of embedded journalism in dangerous communities. Listeners with no football background but an interest in those themes will find it fully accessible and often more disturbing for their detachment from football fandom.
How graphic is the violence in the Among the Thugs audiobook?
The violence is described with journalistic specificity rather than gratuitous dwelling, but it is not sanitized. Buford reports what he witnessed with the directness his editorial integrity required, which means some passages are genuinely uncomfortable. Listeners sensitive to descriptions of crowd violence or physical assault should be aware the content is unsparing.
Does Bill Buford narrating the audiobook himself create any issues for listeners who prefer professional narrators?
Buford's delivery is measured and controlled, and for material this personal it is arguably the only appropriate choice. He does not have the vocal range of a trained narrator, but the authenticity of the author's voice in this intimate and unsettling material more than compensates for what is lost in polish.
