MP takes time out from bashing Boris to write a book about Hearts

Ian Murray MP says writing a book on Hearts' revival has been a distraction from the 'chaos' at Westminster. Picture: Alan Harvey/SNS

It is slightly odd as a sportswriter to be talking to someone who has played such a high-profile part in the latest political convulsions to shake a nation.

The day after he has earned headlines by standing up in the House of Commons to berate Boris Johnson – and having first switched on the BBC Parliament channel to check he’s not in the middle of another coruscating takedown of the PM – I drop the Labour MP for Edinburgh South a line to ask about a book he’s been writing on the battle to save Hearts from liquidation.

This prorogation of Parliament business might have come in handy for the MP as he battled to beat the publisher’s deadline. But it’s far beyond that stage now he tells you. The book’s due out next week. The public launch is at Tynecastle on Friday evening. Even though the Supreme Court has voided prorogation, meaning politicians are back on the green benches, Murray has an appointment he won’t be missing with Archie Macpherson to discuss  all things maroon, free tickets available now.

“The funny thing is, writing this book – it has taken me a year – has been a nice escape from the madness down here,” says Murray, who has unique insight as the former chairman of the Federation of Hearts, the group set to take control of the club next year. “I’ve been mainly writing it on trains while I have been travelling.”

He has spoken to a variety of characters involved in the period in question. Not Vladimir Romanov but nearly everyone else, including former managing director David Southern, current owner Ann Budge and, intriguingly, George Burley, who relives the season – or in his own case, few weeks – when Hearts set a rollicking pace at the top of the league.

“He thought we would win the league, he just had a feeling,” reports Murray, with reference to that 2005-06 campaign. “He said he had been in football for 35 years and you get a feeling when you might do something. He was disappointed when it all went belly up but is still a Hearts supporter and looks out for their results.”

Arrogant, stubborn and prone to incomprehensible outbursts. No, we’re not back to Boris again. Murray clearly had to try and analyse what made Romanov tick: “He’s a megalomaniac but he gave us a lot of our best moments – I won’t tell you the best bit in the book, about what he wanted to change the club’s colours to…”

Murray has one wish – that the book receives better press than his political adversary Jacob Rees-Mogg’s recent offering on eminent Victorian figures, described by one reviewer as so poor even his enemies should will him to become PM since it might stop him writing a follow-up.

Murray is not in this for self-promotion. He wanted to chronicle such turbulent times before others re-wrote history, as tends to happen. He was there at the coalface as a famous club faced ruin. A quote from John Robertson adorns the back cover and points out that without Murray’s intervention, “we’d be dead”.

This is Our Story: How the Fans Kept their Hearts Beating is available to purchase on the official Hearts website. Order, order.