Paul Fennessy

ALMOST 67 YEARS on, the impact of the Munich air disaster on football and British society remains palpable.

With his latest book ‘Munichs,’ David Peace has tried to make sense of this tragedy.

The author recently caught up with The 42 for a chat…

What made you decide to embark on this project?

I had written ‘The Damned United’ and ‘Red or Dead,’ and I had it in my mind to write another football book. I thought it would be about Manchester United, but I just wasn’t entirely sure when I would do it and of the structure of the book.

In May 2022, my father passed away, and my grandfather — his dad — him, me, we were all Huddersfield Town supporters.

But apart from Huddersfield, the team my dad talked about the most were the ‘Busby Babes.’ He’d seen them play Huddersfield in the ’50s with his dad.

The crash had a big effect on him — like it did so many people in Britain, Ireland and around the world.

We talked so much throughout my life about football, it was a way to write the book he would want to read, to keep the conversation going. 

The original plan was to write a book that would go from the crash through the European Cup final, and relegation in ’74. It would be done in short stories, each focusing on a different part.

But when I started to work on the disaster, even though I knew the story well, the more I read about it and researched it, I realised that maybe fanatical Manchester United fans know all the details — but people outside of the club probably don’t anymore. I mean, they know some players died, and that some journalists died. I don’t think they know how the club kept going and about [former United assistant boss] Jimmy Murphy, so it just became a novel.

It was daunting because so much had been written about it. But as far as I’m aware, I don’t think anyone’s written a novel.

And then the novel, by trying to dramatise the things that I’d read in the non-fiction books, and to make it more immediate for the reader, I was trying to put myself back into 1958 and hopefully, to put the reader back into 1958 — living the events as the characters who survived the disaster.

I wanted the book to have an impact on people like [the news of] the crash itself had on my dad.

How tough a balancing act is it blending truth and fiction?

I would say 95% of what’s in the book happened. I mean, there are some incidents like the ghost of the journalist, Donny Davies, appears. Nobby Stiles has his moment with Tommy Taylor’s boots. But even in the passage in the book about Tommy Taylor’s boots and Nobby Stiles, the true story is that Nobby did have Tommy Taylor’s boots, and he did polish them every night, and he did keep them under his bed, and then later on, he gave them to the club museum.

So in my reading and research about Nobby Stiles — I knew he was a devout Catholic.

And I thought that the idea that Tommy Taylor’s boots might have miraculously helped Man United to win a game — it’s not a literal truth, maybe Nobby Stiles didn’t think that, but it’s true to the character — somebody who was devoted to Manchester United and was a devout Catholic who believed in miracles.

Almost everything I would say is based on something I read in a non-fiction book.

What attracts you to football as a subject and could you see yourself writing many more books on it?

I was going to write the novel from the ’68 European Cup final through to the relegation in ’74 and I only got as far as the crash.

So actually, what I’m working on — I don’t want to do just parts two and three of Munich, I want them to be different books, but I want to cover United from where the book stops [the '58 FA Cup final], up to ’68 at least.

I think there’s something about the history of Manchester United that is a good way to write about the history of Britain.

I’m curious about some of the people featured in the book. Harry Gregg could almost be someone out of fiction. 

I think often when I’m writing about football — it was the same when I was writing about Brian Clough or Bill Shankly — the characters you get in football, particularly in the past, I’m not sure about these days, this is why I would never make it up — you can’t invent Harry Gregg.

And that’s another reason I want to keep going with the story. For a novelist, he’s just a gift because he’s so complex. He’s got that heroic side, he’s combative. He doesn’t always get on with his teammates, he has all kinds of run-ins with people. He ends up leaving Manchester United and so forth later on. 

And then contrast him with someone like Bill Foulkes — they didn’t always get on, that kind of double act that there is there, I found fascinating.

In a sense, do you think Bobby Charlton never fully recovered from what happened in Munich?

Absolutely. I always wanted to write about Manchester United, and I thought it might be based on Bobby Charlton because I found him so intriguing.

He’s so famous. I’ve been living in Japan for nearly 30 years. And people know Bobby Charlton.

I was once asked to write an article about him for a French publication — he’s known worldwide.

Yet people don’t know much about him — he’s such an enigmatic figure.

After Munich, people said he never smiled or laughed again, which is an exaggeration, but it speaks to the truth.

He did feel that for the rest of his life, he was playing for his best friends, who had died.

And I think later on, that goes to the root of his problems with George Best, who he saw as not making [the most of his talent].

It’s quite a common thing that people say if Duncan Edwards lived, people would have accepted him as the greatest English player of all time.

I think because that potential was never fulfilled, and then George Best comes along, and Bobby Charlton sees him as not fulfilling his potential. Although Best did incredible things, it’s not exactly that Best squandered his career if you think about it.

Is it even possible to fully recover from something like Munich? 

The thing that struck me was if you think that Harry Gregg and Bill Foulkes walk away from the crash, and within two weeks, they’re running out at Old Trafford playing Sheffield Wednesday, having seen their friends die. But there was no thought of treatment or care for them.

Maybe, it goes back to the proximity to the Second World War. Matt Busby, Jimmy Murphy and other coaches all served in the army. So there was this mentality that you had to ‘get on with it’.

When Jimmy Murphy brings Harry Gregg and Bill Foulkes back by train and then across the channel to London, they’re so traumatised that the train journey itself is traumatic because of the train’s speed and the sound of the brakes.

Harry Gregg had headaches, problems with his vision and so forth for years afterwards. And that’s a physical thing, but you think of the mental anguish.

It’s survivors’ guilt, right?

Bobby Charlton particularly suffered from it. And Matt Busby was torn up by the guilt, on multiple levels.

Tell us about learning ‘Dublinese’.

I’ve got a good friend here who’s a Professor of Literature from Dublin. He is a poet and translator — Andy Fitzsimons.

And so I wrote it as best I could, listening to interviews with people on RTÉ.

Then I sent Andy the Liam Whelan section and he gave it back to me with ways to improve [the vernacular]. So that section was heavily polished by my good friend. That’s why I thank him [in the acknowledgements].

What was Liam like as a player and person?

One of the reasons why it became more important for me to write the book and to finish it — I understand why people focus on Duncan Edwards but there were many great players. Roger Byrne, the captain of United, also played for England. Tommy Taylor was an England international.

United fans may remember Liam Whelan because of Munich, but I don’t think people appreciate how great a player he was.

There is some grainy YouTube footage of certain European games they played. He’s almost a Peter Crouch-type build when you look at the film. But he was an incredibly gifted player.

I think it’s against Athletic Bilbao where he gets the ball at the halfway line on a muddy pitch, goes around half the team and scores.

When you read the accounts, there’s a tragic element to him. I think he was quite homesick as well. He was missing his mum and his elder brother.

But he comes across as almost a saintly figure. And I hope that’s one of the things the book does — in Ireland, he is well remembered — but to bring him back to people’s minds a little bit more.

What was the biggest challenge of writing ‘Munichs?

Well, the biggest challenge was to write it so that it honoured those who had died and the survivors. 

It’s nice that relatives of people like Jimmy Murphy and Frank Taylor were moved by the book.

So many books have been written about it — and very good books. And I didn’t want to be writing a book to exploit the tragedy.

I don’t mean this as disrespectful to Manchester United, but their fans know about Munich. And they commemorate it very well every year.

But it shouldn’t only be something that happened to Manchester United because people all around the world have been moved by it. It’s a story almost bigger than United and deserves to be known by everybody.

So basically re-establishing it as an important part of history, regardless of whom people support or whether they’re interested in football.

The book provides an insight into a world that no longer exists. Was that something you were consciously trying to achieve?

I was writing it in 2022, I’m writing about 1958 but the things that I’m drawn to in 1958 are the differences.

It’s a moment that does change Britain and sport in Britain.

One of the things that struck me was the closeness of the community and the club. And football has long changed from being that.

Soon after Munich, many terrace houses and areas around which the local Manchester United support came from were all torn down.

People moved out of those areas, and then housing came up with tower blocks, and so forth.

Someone said because those changes were coming to Manchester, it was almost like the mourning in Manchester for Munich was a premonition of what they would lose. It’s like the last act of a community.

There were things that also struck me as quite similar. I was surprised that the shouting: ‘You should have died in Munich,’ that type of thing happened so quickly after the disaster.

And the hate mail that the pilot James Thain received, or even Dennis Viollet, letters from so-called supporters saying: ‘You shouldn’t play in the team. You’re keeping the young lads out.’

Those kinds of things seem very contemporary to me. They seem more akin to the age of tragedy chanting and social media. 

Duncan Edwards didn’t die instantly but passed away in hospital later. It’s almost like a second tragedy, right?

I was aware that he had died later. But what struck me when I went back to the newspapers at the time — the morning and evening editions of the papers had twice-daily updates on his condition. He would be rallying one day, and then he’d be down again the next day.

Before Munich, he was already one of the most famous footballers in the country — he had sponsorship deals and a book written about him.

And because of his size and strength, people invested a lot that he would pull through.

And so when United played that first game after the tragedy, he was still alive — United played on the Wednesday, and he died on Friday morning.

And it’s a complete shock to people. United have started playing again, they’ve beaten Sheffield Wednesday. It’s like: ‘They can go on.’ And then that comes.

It’s like a tragedy upon a tragedy. And I think it was a devastating blow for Bobby Charlton and set him back. And I think it was very hard for Jimmy Murphy.

Was there ever a real possibility of United going out of existence?

I don’t think they would have ever gone out of existence. But if Jimmy Murphy had died in that crash, I don’t see anybody else at United who would have had the strength of character or personality to keep that team going and take them on that incredible cup run. I think it would have been difficult for them.

You look at the side killed in 1949 when Torino’s plane crashed. I mean, the difference was everybody died, so it took them a long time [to recover].

But you cannot underestimate Murphy’s role in keeping United going.

And it’s interesting, because doing the bits I’m doing now in the new book — he gets them to the cup final, and they lose.

The book stops before we get to it. But they go out of the European Cup as well. And the next season, they finished second — nobody thought they would, even they were amazed.

But then after that, it’s a good four seasons before they pick up again. I think that season they almost got relegated when they won the FA Cup, and it’s the coming of George Best that alters things for them.

Is it emotionally draining to write a book about such a tragic event?

It was connected with grieving over my father. So a way for me to deal with that was by writing the book.

It sounds like a daft thing, but as I was writing the book, I was shocked myself and I’m writing the bloody book.

The way I check my work is to read it aloud over and over, and I found some passages very difficult to read without getting upset. 

I don’t see the story as being mine — I don’t see that I invented it. It’s almost like you’re channelling something.

But that’s when I know it’s working if I’m getting upset.