James Riordan (10 October 1936 – 11 February 2012[1])[2][3] was an
English novelist, broadcaster, sports historian, and Russian scholar.[4]
He was well known for his work Sport in Soviet Society, the first academic look at sport in the Soviet Union, and for his children's novels.
He claims to have been the first
Briton to play
football in the
USSR, playing for
FC Spartak Moscow in 1963.[5] There are, however, no documents, match reports or eyewitness accounts that support his claim, and many details in the story were inaccurate.[6]
Life and career
Born in Portsmouth in 1936,[7] James Riordan learned to speak Russian during National Service training in the
Royal Air Force from 1955 to 1957. In 1960, he graduated in Russian Studies at the
University of Birmingham, before qualifying as a teacher at the London Institute of Education.
In 1963, Riordan studied at the Communist higher party school in Moscow; he was an avowed Communist and was one of the few English students at the school.
His autobiography Comrade Jim: The Spy Who Played for Spartak includes an account of his games for Spartak Moscow; some Russian commentators have questioned these claims.[8]
When he returned to England, he became lecturer at
Bradford University before moving on to the University of Surrey at
Guildford where became head of the Russian Department and was awarded a personal professorship. In 1980, he was the Olympic attache for the
British Olympic Association of the 1980
Moscow Olympics. He held an honorary doctorate of Grenoble University and was President (2003-5) and later Fellow of the
European Committee for Sports History.
His autobiography, Comrade Jim: The Spy who Played for Spartak, was published in 2008.[9]
His 2008 novel The Sniper tells the story of
Soviet sniper Tania Chernova and is based on Riordan's interviews with the subject.[10]
He has also made a study of "
The Death Match" — the 1943 non-official association football match between Soviet
POWs and soldiers of the
Wehrmacht — and has written a scholarly article[11] and a children's novel, Match of Death, on the subject.
Select bibliography
Autobiography
Comrade Jim: The Spy Who Played for Spartak, Harper Perennial, 2009.
ISBN0007251157
Non-fiction
Sport in Soviet Society: Development of Sport and Physical Education in Russia and the USSR. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1977. (partially Birmingham, Univ., Diss.).
ISBN0-521-21284-7.
^Riordan, James. "The Match of Death: Kiev, 9 August 1942" in Soccer & Society, Volume 4, Issue 1 March 2003, pages 87-93. DOI: 10.1080/14660970512331390753