Chapter 3 uses the most iconic figure in LFC’s pre-Shankly history, the Scottish winger Billy Liddell, as the jumping off point for a study of a club, and a city, in apparent post-war decline. Topics range from Liverpool’s early de-industrialisation to LFC’s local rivalry with the ‘Mersey Millionaires’, Everton.

This chapter is dedicated to Bill Shankly’s sudden retirement, and the letters it inspired, as a window into a history of emotions among Liverpool supporters in the mid-1970s. These hitherto unseen letters, from the Shankly Family Archive, are written manifestations of the club’s increased ability to appeal across lines of class, gender, nationality, and race, particularly via its most beloved figure, the charismatic Scottish socialist, Shankly.

Liverpool’s FA Cup final win over Leeds United is the jumping off point here for a chapter on LFC, the Beatles, and Liverpool’s social history in a period when the city was, in the words of poet Allen Ginsberg, ‘the centre of consciousness of the human universe’. Ginsberg was on Merseyside in May 1965, the month in which Liverpool beat Leeds to win the club’s first FA Cup. The ensuing celebrations, as one local newspaper remarked, made The Beatles’ recent homecoming ‘look like a vicarage tea party’. Central to this chapter is the interlinked role of football and music as mass cultural forces behind Liverpool’s resurgent civic pride in the 1960s.

A framework for subsequent chronological chapters on LFC from 1959 to 2024, Chapter 2 offers a fan-focused history of the place Liverpool supporters call home, Anfield. Going back to the ground’s opening in 1884, and LFC’s residency there from 1892, Chapter 2 examines Anfield’s evolution as a physical and emotional space, focusing in particular on the Spion Kop. The vast terrace, opened in 1906, became under Shankly the centrepoint of Anfield’s reputation, internationally renowned for its noise, humour, and sometimes rough camaraderie.

This chapter uses Bill Shankly’s appointment as manager as the jumping off point for a discussion of LFC and the city of Liverpool on the cusp of the 60s. It examines the pre-1959 career of Bill Shankly, his early (not immediately successful) years as LFC boss, and the club’s long and fruitful relationship with Scottish football. The arrival of the ultimate Scottish hero, Shankly, is placed in the context of e.g. the 1892/93 ‘Team of the Macs’ and popular players such as Alex Raisbeck and later Manchester United manager Matt Busby.