This weekend is the perfect time to order the two fine Celtic books we’ve been talking about on The Celtic Star over the past few months. Invincible by Matt Corr was published in May and gives the most in-depth narrative on what was a remarkable season for Celtic and every single supporter. Then well in time for Christmas, three of this site’s finest Celtic writers – Celtic Historian David Potter, published Celtic author Liam Kelly and Invincible writer Matt Corr combined to tell the remarkable story of Walfrid & The Bould Bhoys. Both of these hardback books are beautifully produced and the photographs sections in each are impressive. You can order both books directly from The Celtic Star over at https://celticstarbooks.com – either one or both will make an ideal Christmas gift.
WALFRID AND THE BOULD BHOYS
There can surely be no other football club in the world whose history is devoured, cherished then handed down through family, enabling our children and grandchildren to recite the great names and events of the past with the same feeling and passion as for those they witnessed first-hand. It is a rite of passage. A gift which is uniquely Celtic…
In Walfrid & The Bould Bhoys, the second book published by The Celtic Star in 2020, authors from three generations of that Celtic family take you on a magical journey through the early days of the new football club which was springing to life in Glasgow’s impoverished east end.
Through Liam Kelly, we meet the founding fathers. Those men whose compassion, vision and energy created Celtic Football Club for the most wonderful of reasons, to help those struggling to survive. Those of our forefathers and mothers who had nothing. Origins and principles which set us apart as more than a football club, even to this day.
We walk game-by-game through an incredible debut season with Matt Corr, as players are recruited to form a team which will become a cause, a reason for living the other six days in the week. Challenging the established order and creating joy in the communities of the east end by reaching the prestigious Scottish Cup Final from a standing start, then delivering silverware, all within that thrilling first year of existence.
We hear the thoughts of a Celtic supporter, Dan Drake, who lived through that first season and who attended the original Celtic Park with his own father on the day it all began, with a 5-2 victory over Rangers back in May 1888.
Then David Potter shares his thoughts on the inaugural heroes in white and green who would thrill Dan and the other Celtic fans of the early years, playing their way into our hearts and the opening chapters of The Celtic Story. Men like Kelly, McMenemy and Quinn, whose names still roll off the tongue more than a century later, idolised to this day by the descendants of the men and women who watched them create history.
This unique collaboration between these three Celtic writers, all published authors in their own right, has it all.
If you want to know your history…you will love Walfrid & The Bould Bhoys.
Meet the Authors…In assembling Walfrid & The Bould Bhoys, The Celtic Star’s own formidable team sheet was brought into action, spanning three separate generations of Celtic supporters.
Liam Kelly published ‘Our Stories & Our Songs’ in 2015 and followed that up last year with ‘Take Me to Your Paradise.’
David Potter has drawn from a lifetime of following the club to write scores of wonderfully informative Celtic books, which will be valued for generations of Hoops supporters to come.
Matt Corr is the author of The Celtic Star’s first publication of 2020, ‘INVINCIBLE’, and is a popular member of the Stadium Tours team at Celtic Park.
WALFRID & THE BOULD BHOYS is beautifully designed and produced, is priced at £19.99 and is published on hard-back by The Celtic Star on 11 September 2020. This new Celtic book is now available to pre-order via THE CELTIC STAR BOOKSTORE…
INVINCIBLE is Matt Corr’s stunning debut as a published Celtic author.
INVINCIBLE has 288 pages plus a bumper 32 pages of colour courtesy of the wonderful Vagelis Georgariou at Big Lens, capturing all the action from that magical Celtic year – surely the best since season 1966-67 when Celtic also won the Treble and added the European Cup!
With forewords from renowned Celtic author and historian, David Potter and a star of the Invincible season ERIK SVIATCHENKO , INVINCIBLE tells the story of the grand old Glasgow club’s record-breaking 2016/17 season through the perspective of a lifelong Hoops supporter, who follows the Bhoys as events unfold which could not possibly have been envisaged by the worldwide Celtic diaspora just twelve months earlier.
New heroes emerge and memories are created, to be recalled and retold by those with Celtic in their hearts long after those privileged to witness history have passed through Parkhead’s gates for the last time. You will laugh and you will cry, as memories from the author’s five decades of following his beloved team are woven into his record of this incredible campaign.
INVINCIBLE. That was how it felt to be Celtic.
Invincible author Matt Corr is a stadium tour guide at Celtic Park, writes for the match day programme and is a popular contributor to The Celtic Star, where he covers Celtic players from the past in great detail as well as writing about the club’s European trips from the perspective of the travelling Hoops support.
“I am in a training camp in Poland and they are there. They stand up and cheer, then start to sing. “He’s magic, you know, Erik Sviatchenko.” I turn to my teammates. “Listen guys. They are everywhere!” That love that you show to every player makes you unique. If I were still in Glasgow, I would walk around with a sign on my back. ‘I am Invincible! Have you ever tried that?’
ERIK SVIATCHENKO, Celtic Invincible Star
“The 2016/17 INVINCIBLE season will be talked about by Celtic supporters for a long time in the same way as people still talk about 1907/08 and 1966/67. It was a tremendous season. Tremendous events need tremendous recording and recounting. Matt Corr has done just that. This is a worthy addition to the impressive panoply of writing about our great club.’
DAVID POTTER, Celtic FC author & historian
