The story of Cissie Charlton’s boys runs with the dark purity of a coal seam through the heart of postwar English soccer. Both have been the subject of myriad books, television shows and documentaries. But rarely have they been studied as subjects of the tiny colliery home on Beatrice Street in Ashington, raised by an exuberant matriarch and a reticent father.
Jonathan Wilson has set out, in chronological fashion, their parallel lives, which overlapped in dressingrooms more so than livingrooms. And it is a gorgeous if slightly saddening tale. Wilson belongs to a new wave of English soccer writers who, in a time of diminishing access to contemporary stars, have sought to write deeply and analytically on the game. His first book was the terrific Behind the Curtain: Travels in Eastern Europe, and his interests frequently dart into unexpected territory. It is easy to see why the Charlton boys are such an enticing subject.
Their lives had a peculiar symmetry. Jack was gregarious and carefree but doubted himself on the football pitch. Bobby was a perpetual worrier for whom the game represented the easiest kind of escape. Bobby came to join Manchester United during a fateful decade that formed the club’s abiding mythos. He was spotted by Matt Busby at an England schoolboys trial at Maine Road; Busby noted how “he did everything with care, almost as if he were sitting at the piano”.
Son, they’ve picked you because they think you are good enough. Now go and prove them right
Jack briefly joined the mining company in Ashington; he loathed it, and had to choose between an interview for Leeds and the police on the same snowy day: he plumped for the soccer club, but it was a close-run thing. Both came through a football culture that was brutally survivalist: sitting on the team bus for his Leeds debut, Jack stewed over what he was supposed to do. Nothing had been said. He was just selected. “Son, they’ve picked you because they think you are good enough,” the veteran Eric Kerfoot told him, to put him out of his misery. “Now go and prove them right.”
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Jack became emblematic of the austere, dazzling white force shaped by Don Revie at Leeds while Bobby formed Busby’s post-Munich trio of golden boys alongside George Best and Denis Law. The first time they met as professionals was playing for United and Leeds. Jack played just 35 times for England but was a central force in Alf Ramsey’s World Cup-winning team of 1966, which Wilson portrays as a model of functionality and discipline. Their paths crossed again when they tried to cut it as managers.
Jack was an animated social creature, given to bursts of anger and affection and nostalgia. He must have been one of the most filmed soccer players of the 1970s. His brother all but winced when the lens was trained on him and was uncomfortable in the spotlight. It becomes obvious from chapter five, Munich, a riveting account of the air crash involving the team in 1958, that Bobby existed in a permanent state of trauma.
The team-mates he lost that afternoon in Belgrade remained more substantive and real to him than many of the men he played alongside in the decade afterwards. At the World Cup homecoming, the brothers were driven in an open-top Rolls-Royce through their boyhood streets in Ashington. Jack was delighted and scanned the crowd for mates; Bobby sat uneasy. “At the town hall, he gave a short gracious but slightly cold speech while Jack lapped up the attention, reflecting on their childhood and the spirit of the town,” Wilson writes.
In fact, Bobby became increasingly estranged from his home place while Jack, cheerfully giving tours to regional television documentarians, would strike a dreamy note straight from the pages of Housman. Once he knew he had escaped the limitations of Ashington, it became the source of his happiness.
Tensions between Bobby’s wife, Norma, and the in-laws are given as the central reason for the strain in the family relationship. Wilson reports that she found Jack “boorish” while her mother-in-law never gave her a chance. “Cissie never sent Bobby’s two daughters a Christmas or birthday card” is a simple line that contains multitudes. For a while, the brothers did not speak. Wilson has limited access to the heart of this family dynamic: the Charltons did not wash their linen in public. But it is clear that Norma was very protective of the uncertainties and demons that beset Bobby, both at the height of his fame and in later life.
Fatigue and dehydration were the nominal reasons for his absence from the celebrations on the night United won the European Cup in 1968. Norma told the other players, “He’s remembering the lads who can’t be here.”
The brothers are indelibly associated with two of England’s most charismatic football clubs. And this book is partly a chronicle of that time, devoting chapters to 1966, to Don Revie and, of course, to George Best, whose recklessness was an affront to Bobby’s inherent reserve. “I can’t understand him,” Charlton complained. The feeling was mutual. They didn’t have the co-ordinates to understand that they both struggled in the spotlight. Wilson is astute in placing Bobby as a young man slightly out of time, his 1950s sensibilities at odds with the messy advent of the following decade. Best’s lifestyle was alien to him. Declining to attend Bobby’s testimonial, Best instead opted to get trashed, throwing darts, and eggs, at a clipping of his team-mate in the pub. Asked about the greatest influence on his career in an interview, Best grinned wickedly and replied,“Cissie Charlton”.
I was more lucky than most. I found two — Big Duncan and George. I suppose, in their own way, they both died, didn’t they?
Wilson has chosen to rely heavily on archives and previously published material — biographies and interviews. It’s a reasonable decision: so many of the names and faces are gone. It means that much of what we read is out there — most Irish soccer fans will be familiar with the segment on Jack’s bizarre appointment as Ireland manager. But the panoramic story is wonderfully told. Because the brothers spent so much time apart, they became a natural prism through which to chronicle the evolution of Leeds and United. Fringe characters come to life. George Best, inevitably, almost steals the show. The Matt Busby on these pages is a tough and unforgiving figure who utters the most haunting line of the book when reflecting on Best and Duncan Edwards, the brilliant star who died from injuries suffered in the Munich crash. Busby noted that most managers go through life praying that they will stumble on one football genius.
“Just one. I was more lucky than most. I found two — Big Duncan and George. I suppose, in their own way, they both died, didn’t they?”
But Cissie’s boys endured. Later life brought a reconciliation of sorts, and Wilson captures the poignant moment when Jack presented Bobby with a lifetime-achievement award on the BBC — it is available online. Jack’s slow descent into dementia was particularly tragic to behold given his exuberant, commanding profile. “He had escaped the noise and danger and confusion of the pit as a young man, but in the end a different darkness would claim him,” writes Wilson. Bobby was too ill to attend Jack’s funeral, in 2020. Now he too has succumbed to dementia, which has stalked postwar footballers. The reputation he had for detachment conceals the deeper truth of the man as well: when Best was gravely ill, it was Bobby who met Denis Law at Stockport station and they travelled to London to visit their stricken team-mate, possibly the first time the trio was together without the adoration and gaze of the crowd.
This is a book about a quickly disappearing time. Wilson occasionally makes authorial observations about the difference between the contemporary game and the Charlton era, but the fleeting appearance of names like Tuchel and Guardiola feels like an intrusion, and breaks the spell. At its heart this is an honourable account of England’s most celebrated football brothers, but it is also a powerful chronicle about how the transformation of English soccer mirrored the societal changes sweeping the land itself.
