Unseen Academicals is formed from three interlinked plot strands. The first strand follows the development of the rules and customs of football from the chanting of the fans to the invention of the ball itself. The second strand follows the story of Mr Nutt, the enigmatic hero of the novel, who turns out to be an orc, a race of violent but misunderstood semi-mythological creatures. Nutt turns out to be, not only a natural football trainer, but also a natural leader of men. The third strand follows the internal political wranglings of the Unseen University as the wizards venture out of their ivory towers to compete (without magic) in the football match. The match itself forms the climax of the story, bringing the various strands together.

Whilst reading Unseen Academicals I couldn’t help thinking about (and you’ll have to bear with me on this) the American TV series The Wire. It’s initially tempting to compare Pratchett’s world building with Tolkien, but, in fact, his focus on different institutions in each book and his satirical approach to modernisation is closer to the depiction (and fictional construction) of Baltimore in the television series.

As in The Wire, the social and cultural innovation and change in Unseen Academicals is written from the perspectives of both the street criminals forced to accept organisation and of the political and intellectual leaders of the city, precipitating the innovation but also affected by it. Pratchett uses football as a metaphor for social cohesion, demonstrated when Mr Nutt, the orc, takes to the pitch in the climax and is (sort of) accepted by the population of Ankh-Morpork.

Where Pratchett differs from the hardboiled writers of The Wire is with his pure, cheerful optimism. While he deals with his subject matter cynically (characters such as Vetinari are the very definition of morally ambiguous) he always allows the innovations to succeed in the end. This is a very British approach to the subject. In all his Ankh-Morpork books, Pratchett celebrates the eccentric inventor.

Characters such as Willaim de Worde, Moist von Lipwig, and now Mr Nutt, are all outsiders who are ridiculed and challenged, the equivalent of the British myth of the amateur in the shed building the future. Indeed, Pratchett himself can be added to this list – pictured as he often is, writing in his office facing an unlikely bank of computer monitors and surrounded by the memorabilia of Discworld.