Author: Russell George
Book Reviews Week: A Life Too Short
A Life Too Short: The Tragedy of Robert Enke by Ronald Reng
Published by Yellow Jersey
2011, £8.99
ISBN: 9780224091664
Like all the best sports books, Ronald Reng’s A Life Too Short is about so much more than sport. The biography of Robert Enke, the German goalkeeper who committed suicide in 2009, it is a quiet yet powerful tribute to a young man ripped apart by clinical depression. Football is …
On the Impossibility of ‘Doing a Likely Lads’
Returning to these pages six months after his comparison of Eamon Dunphy’s Only a Game and Garry Nelson’s Left Foot in the Grave, Manchester United supporter Russell George wonders in his latest post whether he’ll ever make it home for the highlights without knowing the score.
On 26th May 1999, Clive Tyldesley memorably said that Manchester United fans would, ‘forever and a day’ ask each other where they watched …
Diary of a Footballer
Only a Game: The Diary of a Professional Footballer
By Eamon Dunphy
Published by Penguin (second edition)
July 1998, £8.99, ISBN: 9780140102901
Left Foot in the Grave
By Garry Nelson
Published by CollinsWillow
August 1998, available from 1p, ISBN: 9780002187749
Everyone wants to be a footballer. I still do, and I’m 37. But in the absence of a shift of our solar equilibrium (although I do have a decent …
Book Review: The Unfortunates
The Unfortunates
by B. S. Johnson
Published by Secker & Warburg, 1969
£20, ISBN: 9780330353298
For our latest review, our regular guest contributor Russell George has provided his view on the novel that inspired this very website, B. S. Johnson’s magnum opus. Published in 1969, this classic example of experimental literature was out of print for any years before being re-released in the wake of Jonathan Coe’s magisterial biography …
Book Review: A Strange Kind of Glory
A Strange Kind of Glory
By Eamon Dunphy
Published by William Heinemann Ltd, 1991
From £2.49 (Amazon)
978-0434216161
For our latest book review, we mark the 20 year anniversary of Eamon Dunphy’s A Strange Kind of Glory, a definitive text for any scholar of Manchester United. Immediately following the period covered by the irascible Irishman, United were to slip into the second tier - here, Russell George provides his thoughts