Herbert Kilpin, the Lord of Milan, gains recognition his pioneering deserves | Richard Williams
The Nottingham-born lacemaker, who died in 1916, seems to be Milan’s first guiding spirit after heading to Italy at the end of the 19th century but only now is he being recognised in his home townToday the body of a Nottingham lacemaker who helped found one of the world’s most important football clubs lies alongside those of famous poets, sculptors, actors, politicians, musicians and racing drivers in Milan’s Cimitero Monumentale, a place of ornate marble tombs and elegant tree-shaded avenues. But when Herbert Kilpin died on 22 October 1916, aged 46, the memory of his role in establishing the place of football in Italian life already seemed to be fading fast enough to deny him even a name plate on...