Karen Gill looks back on her childhood growing up as the granddaughter of Liverpool's greatest manager, Bill Shankly

Bill Shankly was a force of nature. One apocryphal phrase attributed to Peter Robinson, long-time club secretary and chief executive, told of how the legendary Liverpool manager once had a crowd so whipped up that if he'd asked them to "storm through the Mersey tunnel and seize Birkenhead, they'd have done it."

A formidable presence on the touchline and in the dressing room, Shankly's drive and personality was central to Liverpool's rise from second-division obscurity to the top of the European game, winning the league title on three occasions and bringing the Reds their first taste of continental glory with the UEFA Cup in 1972-73.

His public appearances and media soundbites may have gone down in folklore, but his personality away from the prying eyes of the press and supporters is a side to Shankly that few today can boast of having had the privilege to witness.

Karen Gill is one of the few that can. Growing up in Liverpool in the 1970s, Karen - an author and patron of the Liverpool FC supporters' union that bears his name, Spirit of Shankly - understood her grandfather in a way that even the Reds' most fanatical supporters never did.

The ECHO spoke to Karen and Shankly's grandson, Chris Carline, at an event at The ARC Hotel on Anfield Road to unveil the original 'This Is Anfield' sign, which recently fetched £115,000 at auction, at its new home.

Karen told the ECHO: "You know there's a story that he hated his players to be injured? Basically, he hated his grandchildren to be injured as well. So you'd tremble with fear if you fell over or you got injured in any way, shape or form because he was not very sympathetic, let's just put it like that.

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"And obviously he's motivated and inspired me later on in life, but when you're growing up with such a massive icon in the city, it actually used to get quite annoying because wherever you'd go, you'd just be followed like the Pied Piper by loads of supporters.

"So if you were going shopping, or you were going to eat out in the local cafe, or anything, you'd just be surrounded by people who would just take his attention away.

"So it was only later that it became less annoying and he became an inspiration and a motivation in my life."

As Liverpool manager, and after his retirement in 1974, Shankly insisted on living a lifestyle that is unheard of amongst modern footballers and managers - he lived in the city and wanted to be visible, walking the same cobbles, pavements and parks as the supporters who sang his name.

This in itself has been woven into his legend - the elite football manager who you'd just as easily catch reading the paper in the local cafe as bellowing at his charges from the dugout - but for his family, it was a different prospect altogether.

Though his time came in an age long before the advent of social media and 24-hour mass communication, Shankly was treated practically as a deity by Liverpool supporters and would be recognised wherever he went.

Coupled with his demanding nature, which made him a leader in his field but at times a prickly presence for those close to him, it is easy to imagine how growing up in his orbit might have been exhausting - but for Karen, Bill left an indelible impact that she only fully understood in hindsight.

Karen said: "I think [it was] his vision [that inspired me]. Because we know that he was born in a remote place in Scotland where, if you go there now, you look around and you see how isolated [it is] and it's open to the elements, and you think maybe 100 years ago they had no running water and no electricity.

"And then this man, who came from a small village of, say, 700 when he was born, got to be manager for 15 years and make something so lasting - the bastion of invincibility that we always used to talk about.

"That was the vision and the determination that it took to get to that stage. It is very inspirational."

It was perhaps writer David Peace who painted the most revealing portrait of Shankly in his novel, 'Red or Dead'. Built on repetition and routine, in the text as well as the subject matter, 'Red or Dead' tells the story of a relentless pursuit of excellence that the great man refused to ever let go of, initially unable to stay away from the training ground even after walking away from the managerial hotseat.

One passage in particular, a seemingly-mundane domestic scene involving the meticulous cleaning of an oven, only gains greater meaning after it is repeated again and again - only then does the reader understand that Shankly's ceaseless devotion to the highest standards extended not only to his work but his home life, too.

His humble beginnings in the remote mining village of Glenbuck in Ayrshire, Scotland, certainly influenced this, as it did his instinctive, community-oriented brand of socialism - a vision of collective effort that underpinned the culture he instilled at Liverpool.

On seeing the deteriorated state of Melwood upon his arrival in 1959, Shankly's first act as Liverpool manager was famously to lead his staff onto the pitches to manually clear the ground of debris and level the playing surfaces, setting an example to his players through his own manual labour.

What developed at Liverpool in the following decade and a half under Shankly became known as the 'Liverpool Way', a culture - preserved through the generations of managers and coaches that formed the Liverpool 'Boot Room' - that remains influential to this day.

Chris, who is the director and owner of The Shankly Experience and the owner of the White Star Line Hotel in Liverpool city centre, spoke of his pride that his grandfather's values continue to influence the club he loved so dearly.

Chris told the ECHO: "I think it's huge. I think the Liverpool Way, if you like - which is the ethos by which everybody around the club is accountable to, whether you're a manager, a player, fans, whoever you are connected to the club - that Liverpool Way is hugely important.

"And I think over the years we've seen that if somebody steps outside the Liverpool Way, they've very, very quickly been pulled back in line.

"He created that. He started that Liverpool Way. He's the one who put that ethos in place at the beginning. And all these years on, for it to still be so profound just shows you how special his legacy is.

"And, as Liverpool fans, we will do everything to make sure that that's the case for years to come."