Mike Sansbury, of The Grove Bookshop in Ilkley, reviews Red or Dead by David Peace

This is a book about football, and about politics, but more than anything it is about relationships. Having written The Damned United with a cast of villains, David Peace has returned to the sport to bring us a hero who is, and was, larger than life.

Bill Shankly would have been 100 years old this month, and his influence on football and on Liverpool, city, people and club, is immeasurable.

I had many qualms about reviewing this book. Peace’s style is very distinctive, relying on repetition to an extent that can seem brutal, and the unwary reader is sometimes in danger of sinking in a mire of commonplace statements, whether describing Shankly’s domestic life – “Bill got up from the table. Bill picked up the plates. Bill walked over to the sink” – or his professional existence – “Bill looked around the dressing room. The Liverpool dressing room. From player to player. From Lawrence to Lawler. From Lawler to Strong.” In a book of over seven hundred pages, this could become rather tedious, and some reviewers have found it so. I must admit that I had my own doubts; having been born and brought up in the red half of Liverpool, most of the characters and events of the book are as familiar to me as my own family history, and attempting to read an account written in such an idiosyncratic way seemed quite a task. It is a credit to what David Peace has achieved here that I finished the book with a lump in my throat, having laughed out loud and been close to tears along the way.

The story follows the life and career of Bill Shankly, miner’s son from Ayrshire, from his appointment as Liverpool manager in 1959 to his death in 1984. He was obsessed with creating the most successful team this country had ever seen, and Peace’s controversial style highlights this obsession wonderfully. By the time I reached his retirement (in 1974) I felt as if I had watched every game, kicked every ball, and the mantra of players’ names, changing subtly with each passing season, brought home the seamless way in which teams were broken up, enhanced and rebuilt to ensure success. Each season a few names change, and I felt a real wrench when, after Bill’s retirement, the new names began to replace his chosen men as his successor, Bob Paisley, created his own squad.

The book is shot through with Shankly’s sharp humour, such as his observation that leaving Kevin Keegan out of the England squad was akin to “hanging an innocent man,” but there is pathos too, in his unspoken devotion to his wife (his two loves are “Ness and work”), his generosity to friends, colleagues and supporters and his strong political views. Peace dramatises a wonderful televised conversation with Harold Wilson, in which Shankly’s socialism and Wilson’s love of sport come to the fore. But this is no fictionalised hagiography; his toughness, his inability to let go despite Ness’s gentle pleading, are not hidden away, and the biblical chapter headings suggest that this might be more of a parable than the life of a saint. Despite all this, the overpowering impression of the man is best described in the words Peace has him speak at a testimonial match for Celtic’s Billy McNeill ; “Everything you have earned from the game... You have done it honestly, son. So enjoy this night...Because you deserve it...Because you are honest. An honest man.” Such tributes are worth more than money, knighthoods or glory.