Bøker av John Ludden

78, begins in 2011, when Argentinian journalist Sebastian Gomez is sent a mysterious document pertaining to tell of massive corruption that took place during the 1978 World Cup Finals. Needing to score four times against Peru and overtake Brazil on goal difference to make the final, Argentina won 6-0, and a whole host of conspiracy theories were born. Did the Peruvians take a bribe? 78 digs deep as Sebastian goes in search of the truth. What he finds is frightening. A world-wide conspiracy that involved the Colombian drug cartels, the CIA and even Henry Kissinger, The ''Good Doctor'' himself. All said at some level to have been involved in the fix. The results are a cracking thriller with a shocking twist and finale. (Podcast Version)

As men, they were chalk and cheese, as fighters both were of the highest order. Jackie Brown and Johnny King. Between them they were British, European and World champions. Manchester's and England's finest, but maybe even more important, the pride of Collyhurst. Both were born on those Collyhurst streets, they trained together in Harry Fleming's gym on Paley street. A broken-down, decrepit building where the idea of a cool off was to have a bucket of ice cold water thrown over you, and for sparing a small part of the room simply roped off. But from such small Mancunian acorns rose two boxers who went far beyond the Collyhurst ropes in their ring battles. Until, finally, they fought each other, not once but twice. Fights that ripped Manchester apart. You was either with Jackie or Johnny, no neutrals. Once good friends, blood brothers even, but as both grew into their mid-twenties, won titles, they became men of a world savaged beyond all measures by what surrounded them. Ravaging poverty, crippling unemployment, the slow, but sudden in the north, attempt by the Fascist (Blackshirts) to make their stand and stake a claim on Manchester ground. Oswald Mosley came like an unwanted boil on the backside, but was dealt with at Belle Vue. Jackie and Johnny had a score to settle and there was only one place to sort it. So, here we go. The magnificent, if poignant tale of Jackie Brown and Johnny King. Their rise and their fall. Nobody fights harder or crueller than former brothers as was witnessed during those vicious, merciless bouts in the Battle of Collyhurst Road.

A game put to music, not so much classical, pop, or rock and roll. More Northern Soul.It was one of the greatest matches ever witnessed in English football. Manchester United and West Bromwich Albion. A match and an occasion of its time. Both unsettling, indeed horrific off the pitch, whilst on the field of play a footballing opera. Northern Soul. Both the beast and the Beauty. This is the story of not just that game played out in typical Mancunian rain and snow. Amidst an era of tumultuous times. A country wrecked by political chaos, a raging winter of 78, a blinding snowstorm, all in an astonishing period for West Bromwich Albion football club. From the Chinese Wall to before the snowfall, to the Stretford End, and after the snowfall. And a last dance for Laurie Cunningham in Madrid.

My name is Morning Glory.I began my life on the great plains of Dakota with my brothers and sisters of the Lakota Sioux tribe. Come with me now as we travel across the great ocean with Buffalo Bill's Wild West circus. To the north-west of England. I shall be your spirit guide as we hear about the fate of three of my warrior brothers in that place by the dark running waters of the River Irwell. Black Elk, Charging Thunder and Surrounded by the Enemy. Accompanied by the one and only Buffalo Bill. They dreamed a dream where black clouds drifted across the moon, and cats were prowling on their beat. To a town of blackened, grey skies and a bitter, frightful cold that cuts through your skin like a Sioux hunting knife. This is a wonderful story, it will hopefully make you laugh and cry. I heard a siren from the docks. I saw a train that set the night on fire. The Sioux came, they saw, they fell in love with a dirty old town called Salford.

Anthony H Wilson was once famously quoted as saying, ''when forced to pick between truth and legend, print the legend.'' Maybe the legendary film maker John Ford said it first, but Tony said it better! What is true is way back in the midst of time, Madonna performed, albeit miming, two songs at the Hacienda. The rest of this story, well? Print the legend. We're going to take you on a mystery tour of late-night early eighties Manchester with Tony Wilson as your guide, and a star-struck Madonna listening on to his every hyperbole. For one night only Anthony H is back! A love story about a city. A New York state of Manc. Manchester. Enjoy!

We begin in 1941, leaping flames as the Luftwaffe bomb Old Trafford. United appear done, a broken down wreck of a ground, but then appears Busby. We move then to a short novel about a young man that many who many saw play claim is the finest footballer to ever represent the reds. Duncan. Onto taking flight in the European Cup. A furious battle with the Basque, then the Busby Babes against Di Stefano's Real Madrid. Dancing with giants, Flamenco! We move to a last goodbye. The babes final match on British soil beneath the Highbury clock ticking away. An epitaph to a broken dream. The first game after Munich. United still fighting and Jimmy Murphy carries the flag as we are crying in the rain against Sheffield Wednesday. Our friends from Spain, Real Madrid return in wonderful generosity of spirit and blazing with stars. Don Alfredo, Puskas, Gento and Didi, taking apart a ghost of united team. The babes mostly dead. A Paradise lost. Ten years from Munich, the reds on a warm lit Wembley evening exorcise demons as the boys of 68 finally claim the European Cup. We arrive then at Matt and Jimmy. Sat together in an empty Old Trafford trying to work out and save a friendship thrown into mental turmoil after the crash. Talking and crying about their fallen angels. 1976: Offside! Bobby Stokes racing through and so far offside to be in another postcode, but we are beaten against the underdogs of Southampton. A defiant Tommy Doc declares ''we'll be back next year'' and is true to his word. United returning south to beat treble chasing Liverpool on a magic day in blazing London sunshine.The following year, we danced to northern soul. Ron Atkinson's West Bromwich Albion come to Old Trafford on a late, bitterly cold January afternoon to win 5-3. Arguably the greatest first division game ever played. The ''Three Degrees''. Batson, Regis and the kid with diamonds on the soles of his football boots. Laurie Cunningham. 1983. Spilt milk. United make it to the League Cup final, (The Milk Cup) and lose against Liverpool. But they go down fighting. The same season. An FA Cup semi-final against Arsenal at a Villa Park, turned blood red by United supporters. Robbo first, and then a young Irish kid called Norman Whiteside electrifies the Holte End with a screaming winner! Back at Wembley shooting seagulls. After a tension filled first game when ''Smith must score!'' but didn't. The replay saw Manchester United sweep past Brighton 4-0 and the cup returned to Manchester. Barca 84. 2-0 down from the first leg, the reds with Bryan Robson playing his finest ever game for United, beat a Barcelona team with Maradona and Schuster, 3-0! Robbo being raised high on the shoulders of Mancs at the final whistle. 1999. You couldn't make it up! The Nou Comp, time almost up but even if you close your eyes now you can see it. The Impossible Dream. On Sir Matt's birthday in Barcelona, Manchester United produce a footballing miracle against Bayern Munich. Now we turn to Both Sides Red. A screenplay, about the Glazer takeover, one never finished. To this day, it'll get done. Hopefully when they're gone. If Ole is to be remembered for one match before it all went to footballing hell as United manager, I hope it's this one. From Paris with love and a hangover. Marcus Rashford's last minute penalty sealing a sensational night under the Parisian stars. We finish, Sunday 2nd May 2021. Leaping Flames (part two) The Struggle against the Glazers rages on. The goal remains the same and the day they finally leave our football club will be the greatest 1-0 the reds ever!

SIXTY SIX YEARS SIXTY SIX SEASONSA bunch of bouncing Busby Babes. Two First Division titles were won, plundered. A future so bright it could be seen even through the smog, fumes and smoke of a bleak Mancunian sky. Then Matt Busby turned his attention to Europe and glories, further afield. He knew the game was destined to spread beyond these provinces and shores and wanted Manchester United to be right amongst it, fighting with the elite for the European cup. And then...News of the disaster at Munich dripped like blood onto Manchester. Like a shaving accident refusing to stem bleeding down the face.On Thursday 6th February1958, the plane carrying Manchester United back from Belgrade after a European cup quarter final, crashed at Munich airport, killing twenty-one passengers, including seven players. Left fighting for their lives in a Munich hospital were manager Matt Busby and the living breathing heart and soul of the now decimated Busby Babes. Duncan Edwards. Duncan also would not make it. Manchester was aghast in sorrow. Black drapes, wreaths and heartfelt epic poems to the fallen covered every house and shop windows. The coffins of the dead lay in state at the club gymnasium. Looked over by two policemen whose only task appeared to be handing out tissues for the tears of weeping visitors. A city's heart lay broken. For Manchester United supporters the snow from that Munich runway has never really stopped falling. The following is an anthology of work I have done over the years on the Busby Babes and the crash, plus a section at the end for people to express their own feelings and memories. All which are genuinely moving. As the Munich anniversary arrives every year in the first week of February, and truly heartfelt accolades are spoken. As flowers are laid and songs sung. Older supporters will close their eyes and remember what must surely now feel like a different lifetime ago, that bunch of bouncing Busby Babes. And if you really want to know about the magic of those times, those special young players. Well, just ask them. Then look into their eyes. For few words will be required and you will have your answer.

This is a story that takes place over one Manchester evening back in 1970. During a mysterious time before dawn breaks when George, a clown, a Priest, a hitman, a hooker and a dwarf actor walked the late night, early-shift on the canal paths of Manchester and traipsed over a drawer-bridge, to unknowingly enter a nightclub, that was a world apart. Where the eternal drinkers gathered. A sea of wine, whiskey and pills. Of lovers, dreamers and poets. Scum, lowlifes and those who simply wanted to do nothing more than drink until the sun once more rose over the River Irwell the following morning. A magical, bewitching but also dangerous place. Over the rainbow and under a Mancunian moon. Where lives changed forever, where mermaids swam, Red Indians held sway, gangsters played cards under the Devil's eyes and the Grim Reaper often came to collect. The last time where George could have walked down a different road. A once in a lifetime chance of ruin or redemption. This place had a name but it was more of a time. They called it Oz and I'd like to take you all back down that cobbled canal path. A yellow brick road. Because of the wonderful things he did George was given one last chance but would he take it?

ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE MYSTICAL NORTH(All written in three acts)A collection of ten of my favourite stories with a life of their own. All together in an anthology for the first time. 500 pages of sheer unadulterated, mind-bending madness. I loved writing all of them. Imagination off the scale, some may say round the bend, but you live once and what you leave behind, be it in life or on a page is totally down to you. Wishing upon a crazed Mancunian moon, ladies and gents, I give you the mystical North.

A teenage Diego Maradona shortly after Mundial 78, claimed: ''The ball is always clean.'' Diego was always a dreamer, such an opinion has to be applauded even if sadly looking back now nothing more than a young boy's naive comment. From the dawn of the game being born there has always been far too much blood on the ball. Football stolen and used as blunt tool, a weapon to control and influence the masses. In 1982, as the Falkland/Malvinas conflict raged, Maradona flopped in his first World Cup, Espana 82. He was targeted by giants and ultimately self-exploded and got sent off. However Diego's trials and tribulations on the pitch faded into comparison when viewed against what was occurring in the South Atlantic. 18 year-old Private Edgardo Esteban and his compadres found themselves in a living hell fighting the British Paratroopers and Royal Marines. This book tells the story of both men in that period, Diego and Edgardo. Although one that only ended for each in the past few years, finding redemption and peace in their own different ways.

CHE GUEVARA. ONCE UPON A TIME IN IRELAND.A stormy, hellraising, black rain-lashed sky. Che and his entourage are on a plane returning home to Cuba from a conference in Prague. and have to make an emergency landing at Ireland's, Shannon airport. So, begins a remarkable evening. When one night in Limerick, Che Guevara entered Hanratty's bar and what happened next would become ingrained in the rich tapestry of Irish folklore. RODOLFO JORGE WALSH. THE TYPEWRITER AND THE GUN.This is the story of a revolutionary with a typewriter, one who died as he lived, fighting with everything he had at his disposal. In this case a lone pistol against machine guns. But mostly here was an exceptional writer for the ages in front of a typewriter. Rodolfo Jorge Walsh in his own way changed the world with what he penned. DIEGO ARMANDO MARADONA. TEARS UNDER THE VOLCANO. Adios Diego tells of the dramatic effect Diego Maradona's passing had on Naples and Buenos Aires. The tumultuous, heart-breaking events in both cities of the 25th /26th November 2020 when they said a last adios to Diego.

This is a story of three men for a short period in their lives. For one it would end in shame and disgrace, the other two in a fistful of bullets. Diego Armando Maradona. Firstly, the two seasons at Barcelona, a mere aperitif for what was set to follow in Naples. Those seven years a tumultuous, footballing epic. Albeit the stuff of legend, this just the start of more outrageous events in the years to follow. But where do you begin to tell such a tale? Not Spain or Italy, that would be far too easy, for this is Maradona. To tell the story of Diego Maradona's epic rise and fall in Naples from a Neapolitan god to a broken cocaine addict, halfway to hell, then a miraculous resurrection at USA 94, only to all explode in ignominy once more, we need to begin in a Colombian prison of sorts. Ran not by jailors, the army or police, but by the legendary drug lord, Pablo Escobar. Along the way we shall also tell of a young footballer who tragically for a mistake made out on a playing pitch, lost his life in a fistful of bullets. Andres Escobar. Also, the end of days for his namesake, Pablo. Finally, trapped with nowhere left to run, Pablo Escobar fought out a last stand on a Medellin rooftop, before being gunned down by Colombian police and DEA agents. So, will unfold in two parts an epic tale of blood on the ball, and for Diego Armando Maradona? A footballing god to millions. A last fall from grace at USA 94.

The following is a simple postcard from the tumultuous, magical events of Wednesday 26 May 1999. Scattered pictures still existing in Manchester United supporters minds of when the Treble became a reality. Three minutes lost in time as United produced a comeback, J.K Rowling would have thought too far-fetched to put in a Harry Potter novel. After telling of the Munich Air Crash and the 1968 European Cup final, we move forward thirty one years to 1999. And the miracle of Barcelona. From there, Dancing with Tears in Red Eyes. The last section of the book where people tell in snapshots their own personal memories of what actually happened twenty-five years ago under those black Catalan skies in the Nou Camp. They range from the outrageous to the very emotional. Memories of loved ones no longer around, but they danced and cheered loud when Ole struck and the Manchester United world turned on its very axis.''Football, bloody hell!'' claimed Sir Alex, which is true. But that evening on Sir Matt Busby's 90th birthday was so much more to so many people. I hope you enjoy as we go back now and relive 26/5/99.