WIVENHOE author, playwright and journalist, Anthony Clavane has released the last in his sporting trilogy of books.

Entitled A Yorkshire Tragedy the book is the final part of what Anthony calls his triptych, examining belonging, identity and the rise and fall of tightly knit sporting communities through the eyes of the author's own personal experiences.

"That's what I've been pre-occupied with for the majority of my time as a sports writer," Anthony tells me. "I'm passionate about sport but it's always been the wider themes that have fascinated me and what's really been special for me writing these books is I've been able to explore those in greater detail."

Anthony's first book, Promised Land, was Anthony's exploration of his home city of Leeds.

It examined the role of the Jewish community in the making of the city and the football club, and the rise of working class Leeds writers such as Alan Bennett and Keith Waterhouse.

The book went on to win several awards, including the Sports Book of the Year by the Radio 2 Book Club, Football Book of the Year at last year’s British Sports Book Awards and the Sunday Times Football Book of the Year.

He followed that up with Does Your Rabbi Know You’re Here? The Story of English Football’s Forgotten Tribe, which was the story of Jewish involvement in football, but also touched on immigrants in sport and how their desire is linked to their desire to be a part of a community they sometimes feel excluded from.

In A Yorkshire Tragedy Anthony poses the question 'what has been missing from British sport for the last 30 years'?, and finds the answer in the demise of the great Yorkshire teams of the late Seventies.

"It all went wrong in the Eighties," he explains. "That's when whole communities were being ripped apart because of what was happening with the shutting of the coal mines and the decline of other major industries. Sport, in particular team sports, represented those communities and for me there was a direct correlation between what was happening socially and politically to those great Yorkshire teams."

Now living in Wivenhoe with his family, Anthony moved to Colchester more than 25 years ago to work as a history teacher at St Helena School.

He left teaching five years later to realise his dream of becoming a writer, firstly in local newspapers and then as chief sports writer for the Sunday Mirror.

Anthony now works as a freelancer, writing for a number of different publications as well as concentrating on his books and plays.

He will be launching his book at a special free panel event discussing some of the issues involved at the Royal British Legion Hall on the Quay in Wivenhoe on September 9 at 7pm.

For more information call the Wivenhoe Bookshop, who are organising the event, on 01206 824050.