Childhood
Born at 11 Valley Road, an interwar council house in Grove Hill, Middlesbrough, Brian Clough was the sixth of nine children of a local sweet shop worker, later sugar boiler and then manager. The eldest, Elizabeth, died in 1927 of septicaemia at the age of four. When talking of his childhood he said he "adored it in all its aspects. If anyone should be grateful for their upbringing, for their mam and dad, I'm that person. I was the kid who came from a little part of paradise." On his upbringing in Middlesbrough, Clough claimed that it was not the nicest place in the world, "But to me it was heaven". "Everything I have done, everything I've achieved, everything that I can think of that has directed and affected my life – apart from the drink – stemmed from my childhood. Maybe it was the constant sight of Mam, with eight children to look after, working from morning until night, working harder than you or I have ever worked."
Although a naturally bright child, in 1946 Clough failed his Eleven-plus exam, and attended Marton Grove Secondary Modern school. He later admitted in his autobiography that he had neglected his lessons in favour of sport, although at school he became head boy. Oddly enough, Clough stated in his autobiography 'Walking on Water' that cricket, rather than football, was his first love as a youngster, and that he'd have much rather scored a test century at Lords than a hat-trick at Wembley. Clough left school in 1950 without any qualifications, to work at ICI and did his national service in the RAF Regiment between 1953 and 1955.
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Famous quotes containing the word childhood:
“It is among the ranks of school-age children, those six- to twelve-year-olds who once avidly filled their free moments with childhood play, that the greatest change is evident. In the place of traditional, sometimes ancient childhood games that were still popular a generation ago, in the place of fantasy and make- believe play . . . today’s children have substituted television viewing and, most recently, video games.”
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“Indeed, my mother’s beautiful face still shone with youthfulness that night when she so softly held my hands and sought to stop my tears; but, precisely, it seemed to me that this should not have happened, her anger would have saddened me less than this new sweetness that my childhood had never known; it seemed to me that, with a hidden and impious hand, I had just traced the first wrinkle and made appear the first grey hair in her soul.”
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“The limitless future of childhood shrinks to realistic proportions, to one of limited chances and goals; but, by the same token, the mastery of time and space and the conquest of helplessness afford a hitherto unknown promise of self- realization. This is the human condition of adolescence.”
—Peter Blos (20th century)