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Review
'The most extraordinary novel about football yet to appear.' --Tim Martin, Independent on Sunday
'The Damned Utd is an overwrought, overblown, sliding tackle of a book. I loved it.' --Tony Saint, Daily Telegraph
'If Euripides had ever tried ghosting football memoirs he could not have done it better.' --Alfred Hickling, The Guardian
'The Damned Utd is an overwrought, overblown, sliding tackle of a book. I loved it.' --Tony Saint, Daily Telegraph
'If Euripides had ever tried ghosting football memoirs he could not have done it better.' --Alfred Hickling, The Guardian
Review
"'The most extraordinary novel about football yet to appear.' Tim Martin, Independent on Sunday"
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
At first glance Peace's choice of the
world of 1970's football to set a novel in seems strange. In fact the story of Brian
Clough's 44 days at Leeds United has everything required for a good story- corporate
intrigue, bitterness between work colleagues and an alcoholic anti-hero with
a rags to riches backstory.
The narrative has two alternating strands - Clough's description of his 44
days at Leeds and the story of his time in football management from his
the premature end of his playing career to taking the Leeds manager's job.
At first I didn't find this appealing but as the book progresses this style makes it clear
that his seemingly bizarre actions as Leeds manager had their roots in the attitudes
he had developed and events that had happened in his life and career
to that point, such as his dismissal as manager of Derby. It was the same attitudes that made his premature departure from Leeds inevitable.
The constant repetition of certain phrases of Clough's internal monologue along with his bizarre behaviour (e.g. burning the desk in his predecessors office) hint at a man close to the edge of sanity and knee deep in paranoia. The shadow of the hated previous Leeds manager (Don Revie) fills Clough's thoughts as he aims to completely change the style of play that had made Leeds so successful and so unpopular.
The senior Leeds players engineer his dismissal for this very reason. Clough was unwilling to give Revie or the players any credit, convinced that any success had been achieved through cheating and foul play. He appears only occasionally at training, then usually to abuse the players. At the same time he tries half heartedly to be friends with senior players such as Billy Bremner. From the start they make it clear they have no respect for him either.
Leeds and Clough was clearly a marriage made in hell. Clough's greatest success was taking Derby to the title from the second division, with considerable help from the player scouting talents of assistant manger Peter Taylor. Without Taylor at Leeds and with a ready made team of stars he seems unable to cope. Back with Taylor again at Nottingham Forest he again built a team from scratch and took it to League and European glory. On this basis you wonder if he would have been as good an England manager as it is assumed he would have been.
A knowledge of 70's English football is a help but definitely not essential to enjoy this book. For a reader more used to reading humdrum football autobiographies the writing style will probably seem a little wordy but as the book goes on the fascinating story will help you to forget this.
world of 1970's football to set a novel in seems strange. In fact the story of Brian
Clough's 44 days at Leeds United has everything required for a good story- corporate
intrigue, bitterness between work colleagues and an alcoholic anti-hero with
a rags to riches backstory.
The narrative has two alternating strands - Clough's description of his 44
days at Leeds and the story of his time in football management from his
the premature end of his playing career to taking the Leeds manager's job.
At first I didn't find this appealing but as the book progresses this style makes it clear
that his seemingly bizarre actions as Leeds manager had their roots in the attitudes
he had developed and events that had happened in his life and career
to that point, such as his dismissal as manager of Derby. It was the same attitudes that made his premature departure from Leeds inevitable.
The constant repetition of certain phrases of Clough's internal monologue along with his bizarre behaviour (e.g. burning the desk in his predecessors office) hint at a man close to the edge of sanity and knee deep in paranoia. The shadow of the hated previous Leeds manager (Don Revie) fills Clough's thoughts as he aims to completely change the style of play that had made Leeds so successful and so unpopular.
The senior Leeds players engineer his dismissal for this very reason. Clough was unwilling to give Revie or the players any credit, convinced that any success had been achieved through cheating and foul play. He appears only occasionally at training, then usually to abuse the players. At the same time he tries half heartedly to be friends with senior players such as Billy Bremner. From the start they make it clear they have no respect for him either.
Leeds and Clough was clearly a marriage made in hell. Clough's greatest success was taking Derby to the title from the second division, with considerable help from the player scouting talents of assistant manger Peter Taylor. Without Taylor at Leeds and with a ready made team of stars he seems unable to cope. Back with Taylor again at Nottingham Forest he again built a team from scratch and took it to League and European glory. On this basis you wonder if he would have been as good an England manager as it is assumed he would have been.
A knowledge of 70's English football is a help but definitely not essential to enjoy this book. For a reader more used to reading humdrum football autobiographies the writing style will probably seem a little wordy but as the book goes on the fascinating story will help you to forget this.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
If you devoured the Red Riding Quartet as I did then The Damned Utd is a literary must. Written in the same well timed prose as his earlier offerings Peace manages to run at a relentless pace that leaves you both transfixed and wanting ever more.
As a Yorkshire man myself I have a certain apathy with all of Peace's work and find fascinating the way he manages to darkly evoke the memories of my 1970's Britain childhood. Don't let this put you off however as this is a book for everyone, as were his earlier works. Set around the fateful 44 days that Brian Clough spent at the helm of Leeds United football club whilst also chronicling his earlier career both on and off the bench, Peace brings to life a dark, dark world where his anti heroes exist.
Don't be frightened by the fact that the characters become bigger than the book. This is something that Peace does very well so let yourself be carried along by it. His writing, above all else, is intelligent and the prose enigmatic. Someone once wrote that David Peace was the Yorkshire James Ellroy. He may be even better than that.
As a Yorkshire man myself I have a certain apathy with all of Peace's work and find fascinating the way he manages to darkly evoke the memories of my 1970's Britain childhood. Don't let this put you off however as this is a book for everyone, as were his earlier works. Set around the fateful 44 days that Brian Clough spent at the helm of Leeds United football club whilst also chronicling his earlier career both on and off the bench, Peace brings to life a dark, dark world where his anti heroes exist.
Don't be frightened by the fact that the characters become bigger than the book. This is something that Peace does very well so let yourself be carried along by it. His writing, above all else, is intelligent and the prose enigmatic. Someone once wrote that David Peace was the Yorkshire James Ellroy. He may be even better than that.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
When I first read it I thought The Damned United utterly brilliant. The black heart of football, 70s England, Yorkshire and Leeds Utd in particular, presented through a dazzling first-person novelization of Brian Clough's extraordinary 44-day tenure of the Elland Road hotseat. Marvellous. Football seemed to have found its Heart of Darkness (though whether it was looking for one is another question I suppose). My one grievance was that the end didn't quite justify the bravura performance, rushing toward a climax which never quite arrived. But it seemed a fabulous journey all the same..
Now I'm not quite so sure.
Recently, David Peace has taken to describing 'The Damned United' as 'fiction', which seems more than somewhat disingenuous. If you want to write fiction, seems a bad idea to me to base it around real names and circumstances which create the very strong impression of fact, and expect people (especially friends and family) not to be offended and upset (justifiably for once). Can calling your work 'a fiction' be a defence for any kind of defamation? And defamatory it is in some ways.
I suppose the irony is that no-one who knew Clough would deny that it's a fiction. I gather they would emphatically go along with that. What they object to is it being presented as a version of the facts.
However... I can't get away from the fact that I really liked the book. Around the central Clough story it vividly and viscerally expressed some truths about the 1970s in general and football in that period in particular which chimed with my own recollections. But the more I hear David Peace talk about it, the uneasier I am with the way it presents Brian Clough.
Now I'm not quite so sure.
Recently, David Peace has taken to describing 'The Damned United' as 'fiction', which seems more than somewhat disingenuous. If you want to write fiction, seems a bad idea to me to base it around real names and circumstances which create the very strong impression of fact, and expect people (especially friends and family) not to be offended and upset (justifiably for once). Can calling your work 'a fiction' be a defence for any kind of defamation? And defamatory it is in some ways.
I suppose the irony is that no-one who knew Clough would deny that it's a fiction. I gather they would emphatically go along with that. What they object to is it being presented as a version of the facts.
However... I can't get away from the fact that I really liked the book. Around the central Clough story it vividly and viscerally expressed some truths about the 1970s in general and football in that period in particular which chimed with my own recollections. But the more I hear David Peace talk about it, the uneasier I am with the way it presents Brian Clough.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Football classic
Brian Clough is undoubtedly one of football's greatest characters, and in this book Peace attempts to get into the mind of Clough during his controversial 44-day tenure as manager... Read more
Published 13 days ago by Sport Nut
Page turner!
`The Damned United' is the story of the wrong man at the wrong place at the wrong time. The man is Brian Clough, one of the most successful, charismatic and loved football managers... Read more
Published 23 days ago by os
A stunning and addictive book
This book is an account of Brian Clough's 44 days as manager of Leeds United.
There is some backstory first. Read more
There is some backstory first. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Stephen Hudson
Great read
Loved this book. Really easy to get into and follow from the beginning right through to the end. Jumps between two major periods of Cloughs life and accurately (At least in my... Read more
Published 3 months ago by MR M ROBEY
A great story about football, betrayal friendship and pride
Initially, I believed that The Damned Utd was a biography of Brian Clough and would therefore cover my "non fiction" quota. Read more
Published 4 months ago by R. A. Davison
Excelent
This was not the first book that I ordered from AMAZON. As always, the book arrived on time, it came in excelent conditions since it was new and well packaged.
Published 4 months ago by Patrícia
Peace's Sporting Classic
David Peace's fictional account of Brian Clough's 44-day period in charge at Leeds United in 1974 has (in my view) rightly been acclaimed the best sporting novel ever. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Keith M
Enthralling fictionalised view through Clough's thoughts
This is one of the best page-turners I've read all year, or indeed, ever. It takes the 44-day train wreck of Brian Clough's managership of Leeds Utd and imagines it through what... Read more
Published 11 months ago by Backdrifter
Delighted now
I was disappointed when I first got the book because of its awful condition, however this has been resolved and now I have got a better version of this book.
Published 14 months ago by mr105
Damned good read!
I moved to Leeds as a youngster just as the Revie era began and I followed the team until Wednesday 31st July 1974. Read more
Published 19 months ago by C. Kenyon
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