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Needless to say the historical list of what happened next at Arsenal is almost endless and forever ongoing. But to understand The Arsenal, assuming you don't already, you can do no better than to glean its history through the deeds and daring of those past heroes contained within these pages. There is much to learn about a Club with such an exulted history and although for any serious student of Arsenal history there is little or no delving into uncharted territories within these pages the context in which events unfold is usually clearly dealt with, as of course are the events themselves. Some long forgotten characters such as Bob Benson may be new to some, a player who died following a match and was buried in his Arsenal shirt. As could perhaps some current employees such as Sean O'Connor the manger of our London Colney training centre. Through whom we learn that it is easier for bird spotters to enter the facilities than fans and that apart from some 28,000 trees being planted there are lakes stocked with carp. Does David Seaman still visit the place I wonder?
Those who believe that football hooligans are a modern day phenomena may be surprised to learn that even in the early days at the Manor Ground one match was abandoned due to the vast amount of swearing at the ground. Whilst another was called off because the referee was beaten up by spectators. You can only but hope he was one of Graham Poll's ancestors. So the Arsenal history is not all squeaky clean and Tony Adams problems are openly cited. This however is not a publication to wash dirty linen in public, George Graham's sacking for example is only mentioned in passing as involving controversial circumstances.
The author clearly knows his modern Arsenal history and covers it in depth but the earlier history from 1886 to 1939, which of course includes the groundbreaking Chapman era of the Thirties is crammed into just over seventy pages. While the 40's, 50's and 60's up to the time of Bertie Mee are covered in a little over forty pages. Which to my mind makes the biography rather unbalanced towards the more recent events in the Club's history.
Steve Stammers, the author, is one of the leading journalistic authorities on Arsenal Football Club, thanks primarily to his twenty-two years at the Evening Standard which has been London's leading evening paper for what seems like forever. Certainly for the 50 or so years I've been reading it. Steve has an easy writing style as you might expect from a journalist and is quite comfortable flitting from the current day to the long distant past. So maybe that's why the book, which contains over 60 photographs and some 336 pages, has the balance of history dominated by the more recent events.
As much as I enjoyed reading this biography of a great Club I believe that those who shell out £18.99 for such an authoritative volume shouldn't be finding any typographical errors, never mind three in the first 38 pages. And I was rather disappointed to find no bibliography for a work that must by necessity have required a whole load of research. Whether avid students of Arsenal history will glean anything new from these pages is perhaps irrelevant given that it is aimed more towards those who wish to follow a compelling story of one of the world's greatest football clubs.
Arsenal The Official Biography
Steve Stammers
Published by Hamlyn
Price £18.99
Any decent bookseller will order it in for you if you quote the following reference: ISBN 978 0 600 61892 8 Or it can of course be obtained from any of your favourite online bookstores.