Heyday Of The Football Annual

Christmas Day 1959. Legions of schoolboys up and down the country unwrapped the very first Topical Times Football Book, with Bobby Charlton smacking a leather ball out of a pillar-box red background on the cover. Though this Topical Times annual wasn't the first yearbook, it is fair to say it heralded the golden age of the Christmas football annual, and as the sixties progressed, the shelves in Woolworth's or the local newsagent began to bulge with august volumes. These annuals were educational and insightful, taking the reader into the changing rooms, the supporters' club lounges, and the manager's mind ahead of a tough season. Beautifully illustrated, and largely well written, they helped shape the football consciousness of a generation. In The World of the Football Annual Ian Preece and Doug Cheeseman have bottled the essence of these publications. With selected highlights from the heyday of the Christmas annual, it's a trip back in time to a world where Forfar Athletic and Doncaster Rovers had equal billing with Manchester United and Arsenal, where debate raged over the use of goal average, Huddersfield v Carlisle was the main game on Match of the Day, and the unveiling of Dundee's new stand was deemed worthy of a two-page spread. It's a world long gone.