Footy Books...

Was just going to add that one myself, very good read.

 

I enjoyed the film... I thought he played Cloughie well

 

Yeah I thought Micky Sheen played him well.
But there were other actors who I didn't think were as good, like Timothy Spall as Peter Taylor, and Stephen Graham as Billy Bremner!.
But I think the best role was done by Jim Broadbent, as the Derby Chairman Sam Longson. What was that quote, when they were talking about signing the ageing Dave McKay..
"He's broken more bones than evil f*king Knievel!".

 

The book is a cracking read. But what you have to remember is that it is written as a novel, not a history or biography. The book is essentially true to the facts, but David Peace depicts scenes as he imagined they might have played out in order to add colour to the story. The account is less flattering to some characters, and no doubt they are the ones who have complained about it's authenticity. But not everyone is wholly admirable! I think if one bears the above in mind, it is a cracking read, and highly evocative of an important period in football in my youth.

P.S. Just to add, the film is very good, but you are inevitably distracted by pondering whether the actors are a true likeness to the characters, whereas reading the book, you summon them up from your own memory of them.

 

I heard Peace claim it was fiction based on fact, and didn't he base a lot of that on his own thoughts etc.
But that doesn't mean an author can take the mick though does it.
Jonny Giles took it to court because of libel, and I think he won an out of court settlement. And various bits of it had to be rewritten!.

 

I think that Giles must not have liked the "colouring in" that I referred to. It's a technique not dissimilar to Hilary Mantel's approach, but fortunately for her, the protagonists in the Wolf Hall trilogy were half a millenium dead!

 

Yeah I'm sure none of them lived charming lives did they lol. And none of them were actually innocent on the mucky old 70s footy pitches.
I think it's a thin dividing line though what you can and maybe can't get away with as an author, in the name of "fiction based on fact!".

 

Lady Kaht agrees with you! She is a historian, and can't be having Mantel's added-in bits.