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Abstract
More than 40 years have passed since England beat West Germany to win FIFA's World Cup in 1966 yet this singular historical event remains with us, securely embedded in English popular culture and revisited by the media whenever occasion justifies. References to it are so frequent and so ubiquitous that they have become banal yet powerful signifiers of English national identity. It is argued here that the folk memory of 1966 is also shaped by the way in which the story of England's triumph dovetails with other narratives through which the English try to make sense of the world they live in and the history they have lived through.
Notes
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31. A.J.P. Taylor, English history, 1914–1945 (Oxford, 1965), p. v.
32. Sandbrook, White heat, p. 317.
33. For a succinct account of football's links with these major themes see Matthew Taylor, The association game: A history of British football (Harlow, 2008), pp. 284–306.
34. Norman Shiel, ed., Voices of 1966: Memories of England's World Cup (Stroud, 2000), pp. 100, 106.
35. David Thomson, 4–2 (London, 1996), p. 201.
36. Jason Cowley, The last game: Love, death and football (London, 2009), p. 225.
37. Judy Giles, The parlour and the suburb: Domestic identities, class, femininity and modernity (Oxford, 2004), p. 22.
38. See Shiel, Voices of 1966, pp. 87–8.
39. See Shiel, Voices of 1966, p. 106.
40. Chisari, ‘Shouting housewives’, pp.105–7; Sheil, Voices of 1966, pp. 111–12.
41. Sheil, Voices of 1966, pp. 71, 115.
42. Reader's digest yesterday's Britain: The illustrated story of how we lived, worked and played (London, 1998), p. 270.
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44. Shiel, Voices of 1966, pp. 100–1.
45. Alistair Moffat, Homing (London, 2004), p. 3.
46. Giles, Parlour and suburb, p. 25.
47. David Foster Wallace's essay explaining how Tracy Austin's autobiography broke his heart brilliantly deconstructs the genre. See David Foster Wallace, Consider the lobster: And other essays (New York, 2005), pp. 141–55. See also Joyce Woolridge, ‘These sporting lives: Football autobiographies 1945–1980’, Sport in History, 28 (4) (2008), pp. 620–40.
48. D.J. Taylor, On the Corinthian spirit: The decline of amateurism in sport (London, 2006), p. 113.
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50. Alan Ball with James Mossop, Playing extra time (London, 2004), p. 204.
51. Jack Charlton, Autobiography, p. 123.
52. Leslie Ball in Shiels, Voices of 1966, p. 26. Alan Ball recalled that they were with Mr and Mrs Connelly; his wife thought they had been with Mr and Mrs Stiles. The evidence is not entirely conclusive but on balance it seems more likely that they were with the Connellys. See Stiles, After the ball, pp. 207–8.
53. See Hattenstone, The best of times, pp. 113–20. Gordon Banks has also made this point: ‘When I played there was an intimacy between players and fans that is absent today’. Gordon Banks, Banksy: My autobiography (London, 2002), p. 231.
54. Daily Mail, 26 Apr. 2007.
55. Daily Express, 4, 9 May 2007.
56. Martin Peters with Michael Hart, The ghost of '66: The autobiography (London, 2006), p. 123.
57. Tina Moore, Bobby Moore by the person who knew him best (London, 2005), p. 4.
58. John Major, The autobiography (London, 1999), p. 41; Geoff Hurst with Michael Hart, 1966 and all that: My autobiography (London, 2001), p. 13.
59. Sandbrook, White heat, pp. 322–3.
60. McIlvanney, McIlvanney on football (Edinburgh, 1997), p. 175; see also Weight, Patriots, p. 461.
61. Shiel, Voices of 1966, pp. 104, 122.
62. Young, ‘Two world wars’, pp. 7–9.
63. Football World Cup 1966 – when the Germans invaded Derbyshire, available at http://bygonederbyshire.co.uk/articles/FOOTBALL_WORLD_CUP_1966, accessed 10 May 2009. I am grateful to James Panter for this reference.
64. John Ramsden, Don't mention the war: The British and the Germans since 1890 (London, 2006), pp. 353–4; Weight, Patriots, pp. 459–60.
65. Peters, Ghost of '66, p. 100; Hurst, 1966 and all that, p. 10.
66. Cited in Maguire et al., ‘Weltkreig III?’, p. 441.
67. Leicester Mercury, 12 Apr. 2006.
68. Shiel, Voices of 1966, p. 109.
69. Graham Hutton, ‘The UK economy 1951–61: Performance and retrospect’, Lloyds Bank Review, 61 (1961), p. 1.
70. Maguire et al, ‘Weltkreig III?’, p. 451. For football and national decline generally see Dilwyn Porter, ‘ “Your boys took one hell of a beating”: English football and British decline c.1950–80’, in Adrian Smith and Dilwyn Porter, eds, Sport and national identity in the post-war world (London, 2004), pp. 31–51.
71. Jeremy Paxman, The English: A portrait of a people (London, 1999), pp. 233–4.
72. Jimmy Greaves. The heart of the game (London, 2005), pp. 256–7.
73. Walvin, The only game, p. 143.
74. Thomson, 4–2, p. 221.
75. David Downing, The best of enemies: England v Germany, a century of football rivalry (London, 2000), p. 118.
76. Jonathan Wilson, Inverting the pyramid: A history of football tactics (London, 2008), pp. 142–52.
77. Correlli Barnett, The lost victory: British dreams, British realities, 1945–50 (London, 1996), pp. xii–xiv, for a succinct summary of his main arguments.
78. Weight, Patriots, p. 727.
79. Steve Brocklehurst, ‘England's coming home’, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/Scotland/2057595.stm, accessed 15 June 2009.
80. Shiel, Voices of 1966, p. 107; Denis Law with Bob Harris, The king: The autobiography (London, 2003), pp. 171–2.
81. Weight, Patriots, p. 464.
82. Roger Hutchinson … It is now! The real story of England's 1966 World Cup triumph (Edinburgh, 1995), p. 207
83. Hurst, 1966 and all that, pp. 2–3.
84. Times, 19 Nov. 2008.
85. Shiel, Voices of 1966, p. 84.
86. Sunday Express, 31 July 1966.
87. See Liz Crolley and David Hand, Football, Europe and the press (London, 2002), pp. 19–32.
88. Banks, Banksy, p. 138. For the tests of which Banks was so critical, undertaken at Oxford University in 1995, see Briggs, Don't mention the score, pp. 204–6. Computer analysis of available footage had suggested that the whole of the ball did not cross the line.
89. See Jeff Powell, Bobby Moore: The life and times of a sporting hero (London, 1993), pp. 106–7; see also James Corbett, England expects: A history of the England football team (London, 2006), p. 231.
90. George Cohen, My autobiography (London, 2005), p. 251.
91. ‘World Cup 1966. Did England rig the result?’, available at http://learningcurve.gov.uk/snapshots/snapshot28/htm, accessed 15 June 2009.
92. Ken Jones, Jules Rimet still gleaming? England at the World Cup (London, 2003), p. 124.
93. Shiel, Voices of 1966, p. 127.