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Narrated by James Marriott
It’s always good news when Duncan Hamilton has a new book out. His biographies of Harold Larwood, Brian Clough and Neville Cardus should be on every sports fan’s bookshelf. His latest, Answered Prayers, is on the 1966 World Cup, a story that seems well known but in Hamilton’s hands becomes much more: a social history of postwar austerity and the gloom that can follow glory.
The FA does not come out of it well for its treatment of players. We learn that just after the war the governing body called in Stanley Matthews and Tommy Lawton to quibble over their expenses. Matthews had charged the FA sixpence for a cup of tea and a scone, while Lawton, who had needed to change trains on his
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