The most affecting moment in Gordon Burn’s new book is only marginally connected to its subjects. Borrowed from Jackie Milburn’s autobiography Golden Goals, it takes in a long-ago Christmas morning when the future England centre-forward woke in the small hours to discover a new pair of football boots — the first ever allowed him — lying among the presents. The temptation was too much to resist. At 3.30 a.m. Milburn let himself silently out of the house to find most of his friends, all wearing their festive sporting gear, ‘playing football by torchlight in the middle of the street’.
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