Books – Celtic 125 Years of Celtic (2012)

Celtic Multimedia | Media | Players & Managers Biogs | If You Know The History

Details

Title: Celtic 125 Years of Celtic
Author:
David Potter and Marie Rowan
Published: December 2012

SynopsisBooks - Celtic 125 Years of Celtic (2012) - Pic

This is a massive tome of over 500 pages and well worth its £19.99 with great in-depth research. The season by season layout is a great success and makes it very easy to locate a favourite season.

Obviously everyone makes a bee-line for 1966/67, but every season is there – other great ones e.g. 1907/08, 1937/38, 1968/69 and 2000/01, and less successful ones like 1896/97, 1947/48, 1962/63 and 1993/94.

The book has great games and player profiles which encourage one to read more, and lesser known but still significant club servants are given their true value alongside the truly greats like McGrory, Gallacher, Johnstone and Larsson.

It is a well balanced view of Celtic’s competitive history, and will be used time and time again as a reference book.

[Note: This is an update of an older book by Paul Lunney, but the update is done by the much respected David Potter & Marie Rowan.]

Review

(by joebloggscity)
The work put into this book is majestic. An update on an earlier book by Paul Lunney (which admittedly this reviewer has not read), this is a hardback copy of the statistical history or our club from inception.

Each season is listed in tables with full team line-outs, scores, attendances and competitions. Additionally, there are succinct one page reviews of each season, a competition and selection of player biogs of notable names.

As it’s written by David Potter and Marie Rowan, you know that you are in for something wonderful. Writing is good but due to the short length of the articles, there is little scope for much detail or anything special, however they are of a manageable length for most and is a good stepping stone to other sources (such as TheCelticWiki).

It’s a wonderful resource which all will find is a good read for just flicking through or just dropping on the table to read whatever page it opens up on.

However, there are issues (which the author himself has highlighted up front to this reviewer). Sadly the club wished to rush release of this book in time for the 125 year celebrations, which is fair enough. The problem was though that it didn’t allow time for tidying up aspects which the more eagle eyed will notice in the statistics, which would have been good.

The quality of the cover may be great and look wonderful on any book shelf, but the paper quality is cheap and shoddy, and is a bit of a slight on the great work done by the authors.

Also, whoever chose many of the pictures in the book deserves a ticking off. Many of the pictures of the book are too grainy or there clearly were better shots that could have been obtained. You just need to look through TheCelticWiki to find far superior. The pictures are just hastily added with little thought I’d say. Very bad editorial judgement I hate to say.

It’s disappointing that this book which has much wonderful work done in it to get it created has been spoiled by others. Hopefully a future edition will see more concerned Celtic staff given greater control to ensure the authors are given printing rights and editorship which is more befitting of their work. Then it will definitely be one that I would say would make this a mandatory book for all Celtic historians.

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Books - Celtic 125 Years of Celtic (2012) - Pic