The captain of England's finest football hour in 1966 was also the first of the World Cup winners to die aged only 51, his legend intact. It is not that we do not know the real Moore of course, it is more that his polite and sober public persona amazingly shielded a private life as booze-soaked and turbulent as that of more infamous contemporaries. Moore was an East End gentleman, who folded his clothes neatly and always did and said the right thing in public, redolent of an older age of civic decency. That we prefer the myth of the blond-haired icon in the red shirt wielding the golden prize to the more complex reality says something about us, or perhaps it was just Moore's fortune to be famous before Rupert Murdoch came to Fleet Street. Either way, it is interesting how English mores and behavioural codes of the pre-war generation were thriving in the working classes but also how societal changes led to many living effectively double lives. This book is probably the best biography of our only World Cup-winning skipper and makes for fascinating reading for fans and social historians alike.

Got this book for my grandfather who played football in the army during the war. He thoroughly enjoyed it and it brought back memories