Best and Edwards: Football, Fame and Oblivion - Softcover

By the mid-fifties Manchester United had caught the imagination of the country. Duncan Edwards played his first game for the club at the age of fifteen years and eight months in 1953. Two years later he won his first England cap and Walter Winterbottom, then England manager, referred to him as 'the spirit of British football'. On 15-a-week and living at Mrs Watson's boarding house at 5 Birch Avenue in Manchester, Edwards was the most prized of the Busby Babes. Then in February 1958 came Munich. Half a decade later George Best represented United reborn. 'Georgie' of the boutiques and dolly birds; 'El Beatle' of the European Cup in '68 and European Player of the Year; in the opinion of Pele,the most naturally talented footballer that ever lived. Retired at 27and reduced to the role of Chelsea barfly and tabloid perennial; George, where did it all go wrong? An investigation into a club, two personalities and an England that has all but disappeared, Best and Edwards plots the course and trajectory of two careers unmoored in wildly different ways.

Gordon Burn was born in Newcastle in 1948 and now lives in London. He is the author of the novelsAlma Cogan (winner of the 1992 Whitbread First Novel Prize), Fullalove and The North of England Home Service .He is also the author of the works of non-fiction,Somebody's Husband, Somebody's Son (winner of a US Edgar Allan Poe award),Pocket Money and Happy Like Murderers. He wrote the text for Damien Hirst's book, I want to spend the rest of my life everywhere, with everyone, one to one, always, forever, now, before their collaboration On the Way to Work. In 1991 he was named columnist of the year in the Magazine Publishing Awards for his sports column in Esquire.