David Peace has an almost apologetic stance.
So as he walked on stage at Ilkley Playhouse last Saturday it was hard to imagine that this was the man who offended so many with his interpretation of football legend Brian Clough’s spell as manager at Leeds United. But offend he did.
Both Clough’s family and former Leeds players complained about the way they were portrayed in Peace’s hit novel The Damned United.
The outrage that followed the book’s release obviously hit the Yorkshire writer hard. He referred to it on more than one occasion during his talk but still seemed genuinely baffled by it all.
The book, Peace repeatedly told the audience, like all his books, was fiction. He said: “I went back through the newspapers of the time and all the various books written about Brian Clough and by him.
“I was really surprised the book was criticised because I thought that by putting it into a novel I wasn’t saying it was the truth and by taking Brian Clough’s voice in the novel it would be obvious that this was clearly a novel.
“To me there is a distinction made between fact and fiction that I don’t really understand. If I had written about 44 days in the life of Edgar Alan Poe no one would have batted an eyelid.”
He added that one of the reasons he focused on Brian Clough’s worst 44 days was because his reign started and ended with a Huddersfield Town match – the team that Peace supports.
He said: “I have often been asked why I focused on the worst 44 days of his time. I suppose if I have a concern it’s about people in times of defeat. Brian Clough was a defeated man.
“Growing up in West Yorkshire in the 1970s wasn’t all bad but it did seem like a time of economic and social disin-tegration and I suppose all of my books are interested in defeat and how people react in times of defeat and subsequently what that says about a character.
“I found myself wanting to know why Clough took the job, why he had been sacked? My memories of him were during his time at Nottingham Forest, or as a newspaper columnist. The more I researched him, this character arose.
“I wanted the book to be a kind of tribute to the books I read, books by Alan Sillitoe and John Braine. I found out that Brian Clough had read those books and some of his famous quotes came from there such as ‘Don’t let the ******* let you down. That’s how it all came about.”
Although the Damned United was made into a box office hit, Peace, who was raised in Ossett, admitted: “Normally books try to distance themselves from the film. But it was the other way around. I wasn’t even invited to the premiere – I still haven’t properly seen it.”
The merge of fact and fiction is a feature in Peace’s books. Red Riding tells of police corruption against a backdrop of the Yorkshire Ripper Murders.
Peace said: “I was very conscious of the fact that I was writing about crimes that actually happened and that families were still grieving so the books carried with them a great deal of responsibility.
“But they were novels so I changed the names including that of Peter Sutcliffe. Similarly with the book BG84, which is based on the miners’ strike. This was about events that really happened and the characters are based on real people.
“All of this was funnelled through the fictional process. Fiction can be used to illuminate facts in a way that other ways of writing don’t.”
Peace’s latest book, Occupied City, is set in 1948 – the third year of the US occupation of Japan.
It is based on the true story of 16 bank workers who were poisoned in Tokyo – where Peace has lived for the past 15 years.
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here