It's always a treat to pre-order something, forget about it and then have it turn up out of the blue. Well,
I took delivery of this book today and what a beautiful treat it was too. It's something that could adorn any Charlton fan's coffee table. In terms of content it lies somewhere between Richard Redden's history and the David Ramzan picture books. It's not as in depth as Redden's book, I'm sure no-one would expect it to be, but it does seem to cover all of the major events in the club's history. As it says in the acknowledgements though, it's a nostalgic kick around in the Daily Mirror vaults rather than a history lesson. The rather large text is the giveaway that it doesn't go into too much detail. But for an old duffer like me it was really refreshing to be able to read a book without having to reach for my glasses.
I was surprised that for a book where a large chunk of the content has been sourced from The Daily Mirror archives that there weren't more cuttings of stories, that's not to say there aren't any but there's less than I'd anticipated. What there are, are dozens of wonderful pictures. Many of them, pictures that I haven't seen before. From early pics of the Charlton Babes beating Preston in 1923 to an aerial picture of a wartime game. There are pictures of Sam Bartram working in his shop, Bob Curtis enjoying a tea on the terraces and Johnny Summers hanging a Chinese lantern. The picture of Eddie Werge flying through the air has to be seen to be believed, as indeed does the one of Derek Hales in his boxers. Because of the generous page size all of the pictures are nice and big; in fact for my tastes the picture of Killer is a little too large - I'm sure many will like it though! If there's one thing I wasn't so keen on it was the large captions pasted over many of the pictures. I don't know if the publishers did this to prevent them from being used elsewhere or it was supposed to be part of some trendy design ethos. To me though the pictures should speak for themselves and I'd have been happier with less clutter. I realise though that probably most readers won't give this a second thought.
£25 might seem a lot for a book that can be read in one evening, but I think it's a book that will be browsed through on many occasions and for that reason it's well worth the money. As to the question, what does a juice therapist do? I don't know, but it is apparently what Saša Ilić does for a living now.
When Football Was Football: Charlton Athletic, A Nostalgic Look at a Century of the Club by Michael Walsh is published by Haynes (of car manual fame).
http://www.haynes.co.uk/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10001&storeId=10001&productId=58851&langId=-1 
Comments
Also forgot I had pre-ordered it, so a great treat.