Bobby Moore: By the Person Who Knew Him Best Book

He remains one of the most iconic figure is in football; and Tina Moore’s Bobby Moore: By The Person Who Knew him Best is a book that will find a very ready audience. The jacket of the book uses just one sentence from the woman who was married to him for 24 years, in which she asks the reader to forget the Prime Minister, Prince Charles John Lennon and Paul McCartney: on the night of his greatest success, Bobby Moore was the most famous man in England. When he died in 1993 at the young age of 51, the shock felt throughout the country was palpable: his good looks and charisma, his winning personality and (most of all) his astonishing skill on the field ensured that Moore, the only English football captain ever to raise the World Cup, was a much-loved figure. And, unlike so many of his contemporaries, he had few of the character flaws that render many footballers so unlovable. Not that Moore was a saint: Tina Moore’s book is as frank about the bad times as it is celebratory of the good. He was an extremely introspective and rather enigmatic man, and few people (outside of the woman he married in 1960) really got to know the man. And his success was not achieved without cost: serious illness in his 20s, bitter conflicts with the England manager Ron Greenwood, the kidnap threats against his children -- all are handled here with sympathy and understanding by Tina. In a natural, unforced authorial voice, she is particularly good on the media circus that made their lives a living hell (intrusive media attention is by no means a recent phenomenon, as we learn). The on-the-field triumphs are all here, of course, but it goes without saying that the personal life of the couple is most important to the woman who was married to Moore for so many years; strong sections of the book deal with the grim time of Bogata, when Moore suffered accusations of theft, and his psychological difficulties when adjusting to the fact that he could no longer play as in his heyday. The break-up of the marriage is a particularly poignant section, and the final effect of the book is of a heartening tribute to a remarkable sportsman. --Barry ForshawRead More