Red or Dead
will focus on how Shankly transformed Liverpool into a British footballing
institution.
“As time
goes on it hurts more and more to depict someone who's not here to defend
themselves. And if it upsets your Mum, it upsets you." So said Simon
Clough, son of legendary football manager Brian Clough when the film version of
The Damned United was released in 2009.
The book,
by David Peace, was a fictionalised account of Clough’s 44-day reign at Leeds
United and, though Clough’s family objected vehemently to its depiction of
their patriarch (as did Johnny Giles who sued him for his depiction), the novel
quickly became a critical and word of mouth hit, with Peace utilising the
staccato, rhythmic prose style he’d perfected in the gloomy Red Riding series
and miners’ strike thriller GB84 to articulate Clough’s tormented inner
monologue as he lost his grip and control of his players at Leeds.
Today,
Peace’s publishers Faber and Faber announced that, after a series of novels
based in Japan, Peace will be returning to write about English football with a
novel about legendary Liverpool manager Bill Shankly.
So should
John Toshack and Ian St John get their lawyers prepped? Not by the sound of
things. Peace – a fan of Huddersfield, who Shankly also managed – explained his
motivation thus:
"I
have written about corruption, I've written about crime, I've written about bad
men and I've written about the demons. But now I've had enough of the bad men
and the demons. Now I want to write about a good man. And a saint.”
Red or Dead
will focus on how Shankly transformed a second division team with a crumbling
stadium into a British footballing institution without rival for two decades
and how, suddenly, in 1974, Shankly stood down. Half of Peace’s book will focus
on Shankly’s retirement, one in which he saw his team become even greater under
Bob Paisley and struggled to let go of the club he’d built and, so he thought,
didn’t treat him as well in retirement as Liverpool’s biggest rivals Everton
and Manchester United. Regardless of who you support, it has the potential to
be the sports book of 2013.
Red or Dead
by David Peace will be released in August.
Source http://www.independent.co.uk
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