The Trees and the Night by Daniel McHugh

Not that Clough liked anyone prying behind the strategically tall hedgerows that helped him, and his family, maintain a semblance of privacy during the years when he was the most talked-about manager in the business. The gossip locally was that it must have had something to do with his television adverts for East Midlands Electricity. The Elms was opposite the cricket ground, which suited Clough if he ever had a spare weekend, and had a long driveway illuminated by the kind of external lighting that could seem pretty fancy in the late 1980s. But it was Quarndon where he spent his peak years, winning league titles with two clubs and back-to-back European Cups with Forest. He moved, post-retirement, to neighbouring Darley Abbey and then Duffield, just up the A6. It will be 30 years next Monday since Clough took charge of his last league game and, even if his story deserved a happier ending, there was a lot of sunshine while he sprinkled his precious magic over, first, Derby County and then Nottingham Forest.Ĭlough lived in a beautiful white house, The Elms, in the village of Quarndon, among the rolling countryside of Derbyshire’s Amber Valley. “Walking Together In The Sunshine,” it says. The final line of his epitaph, embossed in gold on the black granite, feels like one last piece of typical Clough.

And, on his walks with Barbara, he liked to serenade her with one of his favourite songs, Jimmy McHugh’s “On the Sunny Side of the Street”.

You might even miss it were your eyes not drawn to that bloom of bright yellow. There is nothing showy about the gravestone for Brian Clough and his wife, Barbara.

The Trees and the Night by Daniel McHugh