At the age of three David Beckham’s parents gave him a Manchester United shirt as a Christmas present, beginning a relationship with the club that was to last a quarter of a century. He signed schoolboy terms in May 1988, eventually joining United as a trainee in July 1991 and moving up to Manchester to begin what was to become an extraordinary story.

From relatively early days, right up to his departure for Real Madrid, Manchester photographers Eamonn and James Clarke recorded his ‘unofficial’ story – even before he came to prominence as a player and well before his meteoric rise to iconic status. They were there when he was a young player finding his feet at the club, there to see him out and about with girl friends or team colleagues, there when ‘Posh Spice’ arrived on the scene, and there as he became the proud father and family man. And they were the first to photograph him, with the cut above his eye, walking in Manchester after the boot-kicking incident with Sir Alex Ferguson – when it began to dawn on everyone that Beckham’s time at Manchester United was almost over.

This extraordinary book charts the rise of David Beckham during his years in Manchester. It is also a fascinating glimpse into the world of the paparrazi and includes many well-known photographs that have featured in magazines both in the UK and internationally – images of perhaps the most famous celebrity on the planet.