Back at Last! New Book out!

Rich Chamberlain has followed up his books "When The Sky Was Blue" (about City's Premier League years) and "Sky Blue Fall" (about City's wilderness years between relegation and SISU) with "Back At Last".

Spoiler - Unlike the other two, this one has a happy ending!

I've always been a massive fan of Rich's writing. His books bring back so many memories whilst there's also things I didn't know at the time or I'd completely forgotten about. So LAST had a chat with Rich to see what was behind Back At LAST.

Hi Rich. What inspired you to write Back at LAST?

We kept on winning so I had no choice! My previous books have mainly told stories of our downfall so it was nice to be able to write about us winning.

How long did it take you to write?

My other books have involved up to 50 interviews and have been written over around a year each. This one was written in a very intense eight weeks of writing. I had made notes throughout the season which really helped, but 50,000 of the 60,000-ish words were written between the Derby match on Good Friday and the final day of the season.

Where can people buy it? Amazon link via LAST bookshop presumably!

Yes, exactly that! After everyone else takes their cut I end up with about 60p per book sold so if everyone could buy ten copies each I’d end up with…quite a bit of money (I’m not great at maths).

Any thoughts of a sequel when we qualify for Europe this season?

If we get into Europe that would deserve a sequel, a Netflix special and a full-length film.

How many City books have you written now?

That’s number four in the bag. The first (When The Sky Was Blue) covered 1992-2001. Sky Blue Fall tells the story of 2001-08. Then, of course, there’s Back At Last. The sneaky fourth one is that I wrote Dave Bennett’s autobiography with him. The big thing I’ve recently been working on is launching The Phoenix, a website where you can find long form analysis, interviews and features in a lovely, ad-free environment. If you’re the kind of person that would like to read a feature on how Gus Hamer will fit into Frank Lampard’s Coventry and follow it up with 3,000 words on how Pele cursed Nii Lamptey, this is the site for you – https://thephoenix.counterpress.media/.

Prediction for this season?

[In my best Mr T voice] Pain. No, not really, I’m actually quite confident. I think we can stay up and even if not we’ll have a bloody good time trying.

Who's your favourite all time player?

Dion was my hero growing up. Robbie Keane as well for those brief 11 months or so.

What's your favourite City match?

The 3-2 Boxing Day win against Arsenal in 1999 sticks out. Sitting next to my dad and seeing Cov win at Wembley takes some beating though. To do it two years in a row was madness.

Villa or Leicester?

I’ve lived in Leicester for the last 40 years so I’ve always supported two teams – Cov and whoever Leicester are playing. I had to sit through them winning the league while we tumbled down the divisions so I really enjoyed last season.

Terry and June or The Good Life?

The Good Life – it’s so bloody nice! (LAST - bonus points for The Young One's reference!)

What's the biggest animal you could singlehandedly clingfilm to a lamp post?

The clingfilm is the real problem here. It’s just such a difficult material to work with. I think I would struggle with the ripping the clingfilm part after putting said animal in place against the lamp post so I’d have to go with something small to avoid taking too much damage. I’ll go with a beaver.

Great work Rich. Look forward to reading this!