S.A. Harvey

S.A. Harvey grew up in Surrey and was seventeen when the 1995-96 season kicked off. Britpop was on the radio and the television money was pouring into the new Premier League. It was easy, at that age, to believe the game could only get better.

Portsmouth taught him otherwise. A lifelong supporter, he watched Pompey win the FA Cup in 2008, and within two years they were the first Premier League club ever to go into administration. It was the fans who saved the club in the end. That is where his passion for the Football League comes from, and his interest in the people who are supposed to be running the game.

He has long loved Mario Puzo’s crime sagas, and The Wire showed him that a crime story could also be a portrait of the institutions around it. English football, remade by money in his own lifetime, felt like the natural home for both.

He lives with his wife and two children. The Dark Arts is his first novel, and the first in a multi-generational saga.