Even if you don’t know the name David Peace you may recognise his fingerprints over any sports book published in the last two decades.
His 2006 novel The Damned Utd, a dramatisation of Brian Clough’s 44-day pratfall as Leeds United’s coach, wasn’t just hailed as ‘probably the best novel ever written about sport’ but it did something never done before – it made book snobs care about football.
And this weekend, Peace spoke at the Manchester Literature Festival to discuss his new book Munichs – a fictionalised account of the 1958 Munich air disaster which took the lives of eight Manchester United players.
Despite a massively influential 25-year career, Peace remains a humble, salt of the earth bloke – a real Yorkshire gentleman. On stage, he tops up his host’s water glass whenever he sees that it’s empty. He’s earnest and a little shy. And when he’s asked a question about his impact on literature he responds, “I’m never very good at these things, I just wrote it.”
Peace is a different beast when reading from Munichs. There’s a religious rhythm and a confidence to the way he narrates that complements the musical quality of his writing. Close your eyes and you could easily imagine you were listening to one of the beat poets.
But Peace is reluctant to talk about his own work. Host and interviewer Professor Katy Shaw does her best to wrangle him back on topic, but it sometimes seems like all he wants to talk about is football. And not in a fun way – more in a ‘talking about all the streets Man Utd players lived on for five minutes’ way.
His knowledge of the game is impressive, but it can be a little academic. Sometimes even the audience tries to nudge him back on subject. “I don’t really watch football, I’m an Evertonian,” jokes a man in the Q&A. Peace laughs, and then talks some more about football.
It’s his geeky charm that carries us through these moments. And after he catches himself “blabbering on” (his words, not mine) he talks about wanting to write positive working-class stories, about reading his words out loud and re-writing them to sound more like poetry, about “football as narrative,” and more importantly “football as healing” – a theme that parallels recent events in his life.
Early in the evening Peace is asked about why he put a project on hold to write another book about football. “Fifty percent of the conversations I had with my dad were about football,” says Peace, whose father passed away in 2022. “It was a way to keep the conversation with him going.”
As the chat comes to a close, and it really has felt like a ‘chat’ rather than a live interview, Peace is asked whether he has anything to add. Instead of plugging the new book, he talks about how grateful he is for the love he’s received that night. “It’s a real ‘pinch yourself’ type moment.”
Photo provided by Manchester Literature Festival
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