In the indelible novel The Damned United (2006), David Peace dramatised Brian Clough’s 44 days as manager of Leeds United in 1974. In the epic Red or Dead (2013), he fictionalised the Bill Shankly era at Liverpool FC. Now, he completes his triptych of novels about football by imagining the story of the February 1958 air disaster that decimated Matt Busby’s young Manchester United team and its aftermath.
Munichs begins moments after the crash, which killed 23 passengers, including eight United players as well as club staff, journalists and crew, who were returning from a European Cup match. At the outset, the defender Bill Foulkes “clambered out through a serrated hole in the side of the plane, careering past shards of twisted, burning metal, certain the plane was going to blow, its engines explode at any moment, in any second, blown to kingdom come, running as fast as he could through the thick, wet snow, but never touching the snow, his feet never touching the ground..
.” If you have read Peace before you will recognise these long sentences, and repetition which he uses throughout Munichs to conjure a mood of sadness and dread as well as channel the demotic of his characters’ world. The novel is steeped in tragedy, its atmosphere so heavy and cold that every page seems to stream with tears and snow.
Peace describes the boredom and fear as Busby, Bobby Charlton and other injured players lie in hospital in Germany. The drawn-out death of the 21-year-old Duncan Edwards.