Persevered

One hundred and fourteen years and no Scottish Cup for Hibernian. It could be considered the biggest curse in football. Cock-up after near-miss after not-a-hope. Over the years Hearts fans have even tried to get the term 'Hibsing it' – to chuck away a vital game from a favourable position – included in the dictionary. Every year would come the mention of 1902, the last time Hibs had won the cup. 1902, when Buffalo Bill still alive and the bra was newly invented. And then came 2016 and a run all the way to the final at Hampden. Hibs couldn't finally, at long, long last, win the infernal, blasted thing ... could they?

Aidan Smith takes us on the turbulent journey that was Hibs' 2016 Scottish Cup Campaign, through a season of peaks and troughs which, despite everything, finally delivered that elusive Cup victory Hibs fans have craved for so long.



Aidan Smith is the author of three previous books: Persevered, Heartfelt and Union Jock. He is a journalist with The Scotsman and a seven-times winner in the Scottish Press Awards.



'The story cannot be better told than by Aidan Smith, an Edinburgh native sentenced not only to watch continued failure but forced to write about it. Persevered is thus intensely personal. It is also wonderfully wide-ranging, dramatic, moving and informative. It is smashing stuff ... It is about that moment when everything works out on the pitch and we are, in the midst of mortgages and existential angst, amazed about just how marvellous this makes us feel'



'the delightfully quirky, witty and exquisitely rendered story of Hibernian winning the Scottish cup'