Charles Buchan's Arsenal Gift Book: Selections from Football Monthly 1951-73 (Charles Buchan's Football Monthly). This item is unavailable.Charles Buchan's Arsenal Gift Book: Selections from Football Monthly 1951-73 (Charles Buchan's Football Monthly)

Charles Buchan's Football Monthly was Britain's first ever football 'glossy'. Packed with hand tinted photographs and celebrity articles, its arrival on the bookstands in September 1951 brought colour and glamour to the nation's football hungry public after years of wartime deprivation and austerity. At its peak in the late 1960s the magazine was sellilng 254,000 copies a week.

The Best of Charles Buchan's Football Monthly was one of last year's best selling Christmas annuals - this year Charles Buchan's Arsenal Gift Book promises similar treats.

After an introduction by Simon Inglis, editor of the Played in Britain series, Arsenal historian Jon Spurling sets the scene: the year is 1951, Highbury Stadium, its wartime bomb damage now patched up, faces a difficult decade. The club's 1930s glamour is rapidly fading. Arsenal stars tell Charles Buchan about life at post war Arsenal. Buchan himself was an Arsenal star in the 1920s and tells some grand tales too.

As the years go by the hairstyles change, the shirts and boots are more streamlined, the stars come and go - Joe Mercer, Wally Barnes, Dennis Crompton, Jack Kelsey, Tommy Lawton, Tommy Docherty, George Graham, Frank McLintock, Bob Wilson, John Radford, George Armstrong... League Champions in 1953, but not again until 1971, FA Cup winners in 1950, but not again until 1971. Throughout thick and thin, Charles Buchan's Football Monthly was there to report on this great football institution with its glorious traditions, and some brilliant kits...

Simon Inglis, editor of the Played in Britain series, has many titles to his name. Engineering Archie (English Heritage) was runner up for the William Hill Sportsbook of the Year Award in 2005. His earlier book, The Football Grounds of Great Britain (Harper Collins) was selected by the Guardian's Frank Keating as the best sports books of the 20th century.

Jon Spurling has written four challenging and popularly acclaimed histories of Arsenal, most recently Highbury, the story of Arsenal in N5 (Orion).