Remembering the days of the great football cartoons

Worthing author Bob Bond offers Home Of English Football: 100 years of Wembley Stadium in Cartoons and Caricatures.
Bob BondBob Bond
Bob Bond

“It’s a product of last year’s lockdown and has kept me from going crazy,” Bob says. “I think the idea came from the publishers: as it’s 100 years since the original stadium was built, let’s do a cartoon history of Wembley.”

The result is a nostalgic journey through football history from the first FA Cup final played at Wembley Stadium through to the modern era. Bob’s collection of match cartoons will evoke fond and light-hearted memories of a time when football cartoons were a feature in most newspapers, he says: “Readers will see how the game evolved through almost a century of Wembley cartoons, with each illustration contextualised with memories or explanations and a concise match report. Every era has its famous players, and the book also has more than 100 caricatures of footballers and managers who made Wembley a special place.

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“The book has a lot of cup finals remembered and plenty of England international matches.”

The book has been published by Pitch Publishing of Worthing.

“To them must go a lot of the credit for taking my scribblings and scratchings and turning them into something quite presentable. It’s 224 pages, hard-backed and packed with cartoons and caricatures.

“It is priced £19.99 from all good bookshops or from Amazon. Or, if people want a signed copy from me, email [email protected]

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“I’m 80 years old. I’m not so eager to pick up my pens and brushes anymore so I raided my archives and found cartoons and caricatures which I’d done years ago for various newspapers and magazines. I then wrote some words to connect them all together chronologically.

“The match cartoon is sadly a relic of the past. The cartoonist was sent to a game, sat with the reporters in the press-box, sketched a few of the salient incidents and players, and his drawing would appear in the newspaper a day or two later.

“I’ve served my time as a match cartoonist with papers including The Worthing Herald. People will buy the book as a present for a football loving dad or grandad, for whom it will bring back a few memories.”

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