Best and Edwards

An investigation into a club, two personalities and an England that has all but disappeared, this work plots the course and trajectory of two careers unmoored in wildly different ways.

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'For those old enough to remember Duncan Edwards, watching Professor Williams, Best's doctor, was to be reminded of the slower, grainier days of 1958 when, in the words of Don DeLillo, "things were not replayed and worn out and run down and used up before midnight of the first day". The hero is the creature other people would like to be. Edwards was such a man, and he enabled people to respect themselves more.' 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 GBP 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 twenty-seven and 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.