"I love the sense of satisfaction that I get when I’ve done a swimming workout or race, and know that I gave my whole being and heart to God in every moment of the swim. It’s the best worship I can offer him."
Immortal
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The biography of George Best, Duncan Hamilton, Century, London 2013. ISBN 9781846059810
When you have a book about the world’s most interesting footballer written by the doyen of sports book writers, then you should be onto a winner. Immortal fully lives up to its billing.
As early as page 9, the author gets to the crux: “The conundrum for him was that football came easily; life, less so. The strain of being who he was – and living up to preconceptions – left him at various stages afraid, confused, angry, profligate and paranoid”.
The book captures of the greatness of George – wonderfully summed up in the book’s subtitle – I had never heard before: Maradona good, Pele better, George Best. At the same time the book does not shy away from the disasters that alcohol brought upon him.
The book bursts some myths. Scout, Bob Bishop, never sent Matt Busby a telegram saying “I think I have found you a genius”. Matt Busby played no role in George’s decision to return to Manchester United after returning to Belfast homesick.
As one would expect from Duncan Hamilton, there are some great one-liners:
• What Busby thought Best needed was a good woman; of course, what Best
thought he needed was several of them.
• Best’s play was “like watching Fred Astaire tap dance in a telephone box”.
• He saw the 60s like a party that had been unable to start without him.
Three pages are devoted to the 1967 Northern Ireland Scotland game – one of Best’s greatest ever. Your reviewer who was privileged to be in Windsor Park that day, still has memories of it.
It was interesting to read that Best’s maternal grandfather was a strong Christian and “the spiritual head of the family”. We are told that through his influence “Best went to Sunday school regularly, sometimes attending both morning and evening services”.
There is a further reference late in his life: “As someone who had barely considered God, religion or the psalms and books of the Bible since he was a boy, Best was surprised where one strand of thinking took him as he ruminated on life. He said he began to ask himself whether his illness was a form of ’divine intervention’. Had he been carried to the brink deliberately? Was this His way of forcing him to mend his ways and get himself sorted out and into shape again?”
Towards the end of the 400 pages, Hamilton profoundly sums up the enigma: “Since fame came at the very start of that life, and the long struggle came afterwards – reversing the usual sequence of events – he always seemed to be living it backwards, which is the first thing to be overcome in taking the full measure of someone we think we already know from old assumptions. The second is this. While what he achieved as a player was considerable, he still seemed to be only on the verge of accomplishing what was in him. Seen in its entirety, it looks as if his career was only half-realised and incomplete”.
The one weakness of the book is that it is written totally from secondary sources – but with the family’s co-operation. Thus at time one wondered about the authenticity of words attributed to Best.
Overall an excellent book and well worth reading whether like me you were privileged to life through his career or if you just want to find out what you missed.