This week on The West Ham Syndrome, Andrew and Max are joined by Brian Williams, journalist, author and West Ham supporter of over fifty years, to discuss his two books about the club and what it means to follow the Hammers across a lifetime.

Brian's first book, Nearly Reach the Sky (2015), is part memoir, part history lesson and part farewell to Upton Park. It traces fifty years of following West Ham through the great players, great occasions and great calamities, weaving in the broader story of the East End and what the club has meant to its community. His second, Home from Home (2017), charts West Ham's move from the Boleyn Ground to the London Stadium by comparing the last season at Upton Park with the first at Stratford, a passionate account of what supporters left behind when the club moved.

We talk about how Brian came to support West Ham as a kid growing up in West London, the first letter he ever had published in a football magazine, and Sam Allardyce's time in charge of the club. We also discuss the pre-match rituals that made matchday at Upton Park what it was, whether anything has improved at the London Stadium in the decade since Brian was writing about it and what the future might hold under new ownership.

Both books are available through Biteback Publishing and on Amazon.

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