Graham Taylor was one of English football's most popular characters. During a managerial career that spanned more than a thousand games and seven promotion campaigns, he earned the respect of his peers and the love of the supporters. Taylor's football career began with six seasons at Grimsby Town. He moved on to Lincoln City where injury ended his career and, aged just twenty-eight, he became the league's youngest manager. In 1977 Elton John persuaded him to join Watford. The pair steered the club on a meteoric rise from the bottom division to Europe in just six years, finishing runners-up in their first top-flight season. After ten years at Watford, Taylor sought a new challenge with Aston Villa. They won promotion at the first attempt then finished runners-up in the top division. Taylor's excellent record in club management led to his appointment as England manager in 1990. A good start saw him lose just one of his first twenty-three internationals, but failure to reach the semi-finals of the 1992 European Championships or qualify for the 1994 World Cup left a deep sense of disappointment as well as torment at the impact the subsequent press mockery had on his family. He returned to club management with a brief stint at Wolves but it was a second spell at Watford that restored his reputation as one of the greats. Written in the two years before he died, In His Own Words is Taylor's autobiography, and tells the story of a life and career spent working with the people and the game he loved. It is an intimate and affectionate depiction of how English football changed during the forty years of his career, and a lasting portrait of a man whose humour and decent values saw him cherished by so many.
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