Henry Cooper by Robert Edwards

understandable result of being witness to total war. Henry’s reaction was typical:
    The day we heard Lewisham Woolworth’s had caught it with a V2 rocket we ran all the way there, about three miles. It was one of the worst tragedies of the war. They were bringing out bits of bodies and, as one of the rescue workers came out with a carrier bag, we were told he had a head in it. We’d go back, and play afterwards. You knew it could happen to you, but it didn’t keep you awake at nights, it didn’t seem topenetrate. I suppose we were too young to have any deep feelings about it.
    But by then the end of the war was in sight and the only evidence of enemy activity was the occasional earthquake thump of a V2. All that the Cooper household needed, particularly an exhausted Lily, was the safe return of Henry senior, which happened in late 1944.
    So the family had survived intact, which was much more than could be said for some, including many neighbours and, as the Allies punched towards Germany, the thoughts of the twins developed about some more peaceful activities.
    All three brothers had always been sporty. Bernard, of a lighter build, preferred athletics, whereas the twins both excelled at football and even cricket, but it was boxing that really interested them. They had never seen a match, except in the cinema, but there was definitely something about it that they liked.
    Henry senior had no objection – one of the first things he did when he returned from the war, proudly wearing his XIV Army bush hat, was to spar with his sons on his knees in the family living room. Boxing was as deep-rooted in the culture then as football is now and, having boxed in the Army first time around, he was all for it.

CHAPTER THREE
RUMBLINGS
    ‘…Amateur sport, which is the best and soundest thing in England’
    SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, The Return of Sherlock Holmes .
    T he Bellingham Boxing Club met weekly in the British Legion Hall and, drawing as it did entirely from the local community, had no shortage of talent spotters. One of these was a neighbour of the Cooper family, a fireman, Robert Hill. He had noticed the nine-year-old twins sparring in the street, football socks wrapped around their fists, and saw something in them that rather interested him; he had himself boxed for the Fire Brigade and therefore knew of what he spoke. He approached Henry senior and asked him if he would be prepared to allow his twins to join the boxing club. He was so convinced that these two were serious prospects that he undertook to pay their subscriptions for the first year.
    Unsurprisingly, the club was healthily oversubscribed; the generation of youths who had observed the war butwho were too young to have taken part in it was to be an aggressive one, so there was a small delay before both the twins were able to attend, which caused some anxiety in the Cooper household. There were other clubs, of course – every neighbourhood had one – but the twins were inseparable and emotionally, if not physically, joined at the hip.
    The purpose of the boxing club was primarily to teach the youngsters three things: training, the atmosphere of the gym and the rudiments of the ring. The object was not to make the boys aggressive (teenage boys are aggressive enough without that), rather it was to give them the discipline to carry on, as the attrition rate in amateur boxing is notoriously high.
    The training rotation was relatively strict, even for young teenagers – running, skipping, bag work and the speedball – and the methods of training had been handed down in the oral tradition, for there were few textbooks. The issue of diet was not a matter of particular scientific interest, particularly straight after the war and anyway, food rationing, in force until 1951, ensured that there were few unsuitably tempting items on offer to distract the ambitious athlete. Decent food could only really be discussed in the abstract.
    Of course, at the most junior level,