Alchemy

The origins of football's greatest managerial partnership is told in full for the first time. Boxing Day 1962. Injury has curtailed Brian Clough's playing career. He persuades ex-teammate Peter Taylor to join him in managing perennial Fourth Division strugglers Hartlepools United. An intuitive chemistry develops as quiet Taylor talent-spots bargain players, and charismatic Clough man-manages them. They apply their magic formula to transform a threadbare team over 19 months a blueprint that later wins them League Championship and European Cup trophies at unfashionable Derby County and Nottingham Forest.

Clough & Taylor's names still resonate with football fans and the general public alike. Exploiting interviews with surviving players, Alchemy relates the bittersweet prelude to the pair's 1970s glory days in the context of Hartlepool's mid-60s industrial decline. Shipbuilding in the North-East town had just ended, and its coal trade was disappearing. A real-life kitchen-sink drama, the pair sack their No. 1 goalkeeper for ill-treating his wife, and a trainer they hire is released when players discover he's homosexual. Narrative tension builds from the club's financial struggles, battles with their chairman, the threat of expulsion from the Football League, and the team's promotion push.

About the Author

Despite being born and raised in London, Christopher Hull has been following Hartlepool United since 1978. He is the author of Our Man Down in Havana (Pegasus, 2019), which William Boyd described as 'A revelation and a delight.'

16 b/w illustrations