When Football Was Football - Tottenham Hotspur
by Adam Powley

208 pages
Haynes Publishing
ISBN 978 1 84425 948 9
Price :  £18.99
Available from http://www.thelaneofdreams.co.uk. 

This large format book looks a bit timid from the outside, but when you open the pages, it draws you into a trip through Tottenham's past using some sumptuous photos drawn from the Daily Mirror's archive, many of which I have not seen before and give an insight into the club's early beginnings through to the mid-1990s.

With clippings from the Mirror through the years to illustrate the era being discussed, there are enough snippets of information that cane be gathered from these, as Adam Powley (well known to Spurs reading fans) highlights the major events in the history of THFC both on and off the pitch.  Legends are featured and the fans also loom large in the way the club has developed over the years.

But the photos are the main attraction of this book, with some unique opportunities to see how things were in years gone by and how they were in more modern times.  With over 200 pages of shots from the cameras of photographers over more than 110 years of Spurs history, it is a fine example of a pictorial record that tells more of a story than anyone could write.  The 1960s WAGs have nothing on the pros doing that job these days !!

My one disappointment with the book is that it stops in the mid-90s, leaving the latter years of the more modern era yearning for a follow up.  But then I suppose this is "When Football Was Football" and although it ran into the last chapter of the book entitled "The Football Business", it was not "When Football Was Big Business".  That can be for next Christmas !!

Recommended as a really good buy for any Spurs fan.

wyart lane