David Peace’s novel “The Damned United” is quite a controversial book. It charts the story of the 44 day stay of Brian Clough as manager of Leeds United at the start of the 1974/75 football season. The book is critically acclaimed but it has also been slammed as not being representative of Clough and of what really happened at the time. Having read it I can see that writing a novel about something so recent and about someone so well known is really dangerous territory.
I picked up The Damned United to read towards the end of July but when I noticed that the book is written with a chapter for each day and that (in real history) the period covered started on July 31st I decided to start reading on that day and to read one chapter each day so that I allowed the story to unfold in real time. In some ways this was a bit frustrating because I often found myself wanting to read ahead but it was also interesting to pace the story out correctly as this helped me to get inside the head of the (fictional) Clough. The 44th, and last, day of the story was September 12th (so I finished reading the book a couple of days ago). One thing I will say is that if you don’t like swearing don’t read this book…
Anyway, there are two key things that the book gave me. First, it gave me a real insight into just how desperate it must be to manage a football team that isn’t winning (something which chimes well with the form of my own team – Plymouth Argyle – at the moment). There’s simply no escape from the failure and it’s hard to see how it would be possible to get any sleep whatsoever in this situation (in the book alcohol helps). Secondly, as I read the book it was impossible not to read it as if it was factually correct and so I am now left with a very clear impression of what Brian Clough was like at this time (I only remember him myself from slightly later in his career) but this is an impression that is actually fictional and so I do not know which parts are reasonable and which are not. I’m not sure this is fair on the reader and most certainly on the real individual involved. Tricky
Tim O'Hare 