1996 : Reflections on the year that changed my life

Tony Adams calls it a "celebration of recovery." It's a monument to candour too. Gruesome memories come with smiles… The fresh detail in his new autobiography, 1996, adds layers that are both harrowing and redemptive as he goes about the work of helping others.' PAUL HAYWARD, The Observer It was the summer of Euro 96 and England was in party mood as the nation hosted a major tournament, revelling in watching Gazza and Co reach the semi-finals. For the national team's captain Tony Adams, though, it masked a misery that had been building all year, with his wife leaving and his children being removed from him as a result of his dangerous and damaging drinking. Following Gareth Southgate's crushing penalty miss against Germany, Adams proceeded to embark on a 44-day bender to drown sorrows that learned how to swim and led him into some seamy, sordid situations. Finally, he could take no more and desperation drove him to quit the booze and get help. A year that had begun in dark despair would end in a new lightness of being. In 1996, Adams revisits in candid, graphic detail that year when football came home but England's thirty years of hurt continued. And, as he reaches his 60th birthday, he reflects with trademark honesty and accumulated wisdom on his own remarkable thirty years off hurt.