Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17433 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-01
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

FHM
'Superb portrait of the conflicted, contradictory man which
doesn't dusk his uglier aspects.'

Jon Spurling, FourFourTwo. ***** 'Best Book'
'A brilliantly insightful, superbly crafted book and essential
reading for anyone who wonders what made the great Brian Clough tick.'

Sunday Express
'Provided You Don't Kiss Me is a case of great title, great book.'

Customer Reviews

A Big Story...
Excellent, straightforward sports biography, distinguished by Hamilton's closeness to his subject and the resulting intimacy of the portrait. No tricks, no fiction or imagined scenes, just sensitive writing and informed analysis of the Clough career and of a very different time in British football - a big enough story in its own right to require very little embroidery.

Duncan Hamilton makes no bones about how fortunate he was to be allowed unparalleled access to the force of nature that was Brian Clough. The portrait that emerges seems to come from something for which 'love' is maybe the only appropriate word; it's to Hamilton's credit that it never seems like obsession as, throughout, he is remarkably clear-eyed about Clough's weaknesses as well as his astonishing triumphs. The excellent and detailed accounts of how Clough took not one but two poor-to-middling English clubs to the heights of European glory (a feat that one struggles to imagine being repeated today) are balanced by an understanding of his very human insecurities and frailties, and by an increasingly dominant subtext - a (literally) sobering account of how low even a character as powerful as Clough could be laid by alcohol.

His favourite word was`s*ithouse`!
This is one of the most enjoyable books I have ever read. I am old enough to remember Clough at his managerial peak in the seventies. What he managed to achieve at two relatively small clubs will never be repeated. Also, I had often wondered why he and his friend/assistant Peter Taylor fell out and Duncan Hamilton explains the whole sorry tale. Do yourself a favour and buy this book.

A Big Story
Excellent, straightforward sports biography, distinguished by Hamilton's closeness to his subject and the resuting intimacy of the portrait. No tricks, no fiction or imagined scenes, just sensitive writing and informed analysis of the Clough career and of a very different time in British football - a big enough story in its own right to require very little embroidery.

Duncan Hamilton makes no bones about how fortunate he was to be allowed unparalleled access to the force of nature that was Brian Clough. The portrait that emerges seems to come from something for which 'love' is maybe the only appropriate word; its to Hamilton's credit that it never seems like obsession as, throughout, he is remarkably clear-eyed about Clough's weaknesses as well as his astonishing triumphs. The excellent and detailed accounts of how Clough took not one but two poor-to-middling English clubs to the heights of European glory (a feat that one struggles to imagine being repeated today) are balanced by an understanding of his very human insecurities and frailties, and by an increasingly dominant subtext - a (literally) sobering account of how low even a character as powerful as Clough could be laid by alcohol.