For a club of our size will have been well served with books about Charlton, especially in the years since we came back to the Valley.
These three books are all slightly older however. All three are by or about Jimmy Seed, who managed the Club for over 20 years and for more games than every other manager (Curbs' 729 falls one short of Seed's total).
The Jimmy Seed Story by Himself (1957) was republished as part of a box set in the 1990s so is the most well known.
Soccer from the Inside came out the year Charlton won the FA Cup. The front cover is a still from British Movietone News featuring Chris Duffy's winning strike. Some of the language now seems old fashioned but even then Seed was calling for a European League as much to promote international co-operation and "a lasting peace" as for what English football can learn. Seed suggests that we should adopt the continental habit of having "separate shower baths for the players" rather than the "unhygienic communal baths" still common in England at the time. The other chapters on tactics, fitness and having the right attitude are still relevant today.
The third book, James Seed - Football Manager, however, is the rarest. Only 60 copies were ever printed and it runs to only 29 pages. The reason for this was that as a young printing student at Oxford Poly in 1976 James Dutton needed to write and produce a complete volume for his studies. As a subject he chose his grandfather. When the Jimmy Seed Stand's name was finally and belatedly restored, post the return to the Valley, James was on the pitch with other family members. He presented the book to me as a thank you with the proviso that it would be given to a Charlton museum if and when such an entity came into existence.
We are still waiting.
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