Thank You Hermann Goering

In his time working for the Daily Sketch and Daily Mail, Brian Scovell probably reported on more Test matches and more international football matches than any other English sports writer. This fascinating, amusing, and finally very moving memoir is filled with hundreds of anecdotes and insights into top sports personalities and other public figures. Thank You, Hermann Goering contains dozens of previously untold stories about, among others, Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Princess Diana, Brian Lara, Enoch Powell, and Alan Sugar. Following a German bombing raid on the Isle of Wight when he was a child, Brian spent two years in hospital listening to match commentaries on the radio and reading the leading sports writer of the day, Tom Phillips. So he has Goering to thank for the way his life turned out. His mother wanted him to be a banker, but in that hospital bed, Brian decided to go to Fleet Street. It was an ambition he realised fifteen years later. Ted Dexter called him 'Scoop' and his talent for journalism sometimes took him out of the sports world: he writes memorably about the secret meeting between Goering and Lord Jellicoe at St Lawrence, and reveals the truth about the German attack on a secret radar installation in the Isle of Wight. One of the book's central stories is Brian's love affair with his beautiful wife Audrey, an artist who died in 2000 and continues to inspire his writing. As he contends with the boozy Cobbold brothers, weathers spats with fellow journalists, and travels the world (meeting Pope John Paul II and Reverend Canaan Banana on the way) she remains his chief allegiance, even more important than newsprint and sport.