Writers
Born in Glasgow in 1934, Tom Campbell emigrated to Canada in 1956. After obtaining an Honours degree in English Literature from Ottawa’s Carleton University, he spent four years at St Paul’s in Alliston, southern Ontario as head teacher. He returned to Ottawa to become head of the English department at St Wilfred Laurier High School before taking on a similar post at the city’s largest high school, Glebe Collegiate. He has also taught in El Salvador.
Since returning to Scotland he has taught in various places on the east coast. He has combined his literary interest with a lifelong support of Celtic to become the author/co-author of 11 books on the history of the club, including The Glory and the Dream (with Pat Woods), Jock Stein: The Celtic Years (with David Potter), Tears for Argentina (a project which involved interviews in Buenos Aires with Racing Club players who took part in the infamous 1967 World Club Championship games) and the recently published Charlie Tully: Celtic’s Cheeky Chappie. He has also contributed to magazines such as The Celt and appeared on Celtic TV.
Tom Campbell contributed a profile on the Maley brothers and interviewed former Racing Club players.
As a professional footballer John Colquhoun played for 17 years for clubs including Hearts, Celtic, Millwall and Sunderland. A former chairman of the Scottish Professional Footballers’ Association, he has held a number of influential positions since his retirement from the game in 1997. John has an honorary degree awarded for his work as the Rector of Edinburgh University from 1997-2000 and served for two years as a member of the Scottish Sports Council. John co-founded the Key Sports Management agency in 1999, whose clients include Theo Walcott and David James, and he provides consultancy for a number of football clubs around Britain.
John Colquhoun reminisced on his short Celtic career in ‘I wore the Hoops’ and acted as a consultant/fixer for the Opus.
Jim Craig joined Celtic from Glasgow University’s football side in January 1965, halfway through the fourth year of a five-year degree course in dentistry. Over the following seven seasons – while qualifying as a dentist in October 1966 – he won seven League Championship medals, four Scottish Cup badges, three League Cups and was at right-back when Celtic became the first British team to win the European Cup in 1967. He was also capped by Scotland.
After leaving Celtic in 1972, Jim had spells with Hellenic in Cape Town and Sheffield Wednesday before returning to Glasgow, where he continued to juggle his work in dentistry with both writing and stints in TV and radio.
Jim has written two books: A Lion Looks Back, 1999, and Scotland’s Sporting Curiosities, 2003. Today, he hosts the Celtic web broadcast on matchdays and is a regular on Celtic TV.
Jim Craig was a member of the panel that selected the ‘Hall Of Fame’ inductees. He wrote ‘Dear Alexander’, ‘Secrets of the Lisbon Lions’ and ‘The Battle of Montevideo’. He also contributed a feature examining the evolution of training techniques and a short history of ‘The Huddle’ matchday ritual.
Paul Cuddihy has worked in journalism for almost 20 years, beginning at the Scottish Catholic Observer newspaper, before moving on to the Evening Times and then the Sunday Herald, where he was the sports production editor.
Paul has been the editor of the Celtic View since January 2001, joining ahead of the Treble-winning season, for which he takes absolutely no credit. Among the highlights of his time at the View are covering the 2002/03 ‘Seville season’, meeting and interviewing the late, great Tommy Burns, the Tannadice title triumph in May 2008, and commissioning Glasgow artist and writer, Alasdair Gray, to draw a special cover of the magazine to commemorate Celtic’s first appearance in the UEFA Champions League, an issue which remains one of the top sellers in the View’s history.
Paul Cuddihy co-wrote the Martin O’Neill interview and contributed a feature on the history of the Celtic View.
Tom Devine is the Sir William Fraser Professor of Scottish History and Palaeography and Head of the School of History, Classics and Archaeology in the University of Edinburgh. He was educated at Strathclyde University and then rose through the academic ranks at that institution from Assistant Lecturer until his appointment in 1993 as the Deputy Principal of the University. Between 1998 and 2005 he set up and developed the world’s first advanced research centre in Irish and Scottish Studies at Aberdeen University which was officially launched on St Andrew’s Day 1999 by the President of Ireland, Mary McAleese. He was Glucksman Research Professor in Aberdeen until his move to Edinburgh.
Tom is the author or editor of some 30 books on Scottish history, Irish-Scottish studies and related subjects. His international bestseller, The Scottish Nation 1700 to 2007 (Second Edition, 2006), briefly outsold the adventures of Harry Potter in Scotland. His research achievements have been recognised by many prizes and awards including the OBE, four honorary doctorates and the Royal Gold Medal, Scotland’s supreme academic accolade. He has the unique distinction of having been elected to all three national academies in the British Isles – the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Royal Irish Academy and the British Academy – the only UK-based historian to be so honoured.
The high point of his career was being invited to chair the proceedings when the statue of Brother Walfrid was unveiled at Celtic Park in 2007.
Tom Devine wrote ‘Birth of a Dream’ on Glasgow in 1888 and the true story of the Irish diaspora.
Lawrence Donegan was born in Stirling in 1961. He went to Glasgow University in 1979, graduated with an MA in politics and economics in 1983, and diversified to become the bass player with Scottish pop group The Bluebells, who had a number one single with the infuriatingly catchy Young at Heart. Lawrence later joined Lloyd Cole and the Commotions – once described by a gullible French journalist as ‘the most well-read group in the history of rock’ – before becoming a journalist in 1991. He is the author of a number of books, including the classic Four Iron in the Soul, tracking his season caddying on the European Tour, and is golf correspondent for The Guardian.
Lawrence Donegan interviewed Fergus McCann, ‘Dixie’ Deans and Brian McClair.
Glenn Gibbons has been covering Scottish football for more than 40 years, starting with D C Thomson & Co in Glasgow in January, 1967. He has since worked for the Daily Mail and as Scotland correspondent for The Guardian, The Observer and the Daily Telegraph, as well as contributing to a range of other newspapers and magazines. He took his present position as chief football writer of The Scotsman in 1999 and is a former Sports Journalist of the Year.
He has chronicled Celtic’s odysseys through Europe for almost four decades, his first foreign assignment being the trip to Lisbon in 1969 for the second-round tie with Benfica which was won, famously, on the toss of a coin after the teams had played out an aggregate 3-3 draw.
During his lengthy career, he has witnessed most of Celtic’s adventures – and occasional misadventures – under every manager since (and including) Jock Stein, in the process developing rewarding friendships with some of the most celebrated figures in the club’s history.
Glenn Gibbons wrote ‘Talent and Torment’, ‘The First Three Cups’, ‘The Road to Lisbon’, ‘Nine in a Row’, ‘Quality Street Gang’, ‘They Came to the East End Bearing Gifts’ and ‘The Celtic Carousel’. He also interviewed Pat Crerand, Billy McNeill, Bobby Lennox, and Sir Alex Ferguson.
Phil Gordon has been a football writer for over 20 years, cutting his teeth on the kids’ magazine Shoot - his own fave food is still scampi and chips - before broadening his horizons in England with the Northern Echo then moving home to the Evening Times, where he covered Celtic for five years in the Nineties. Scotland on Sunday then picked him up in a transfer swoop but for the last ten years he has been freelance, principally for The Times and The Independent, as well as serving a host of European magazines, including Germany’s prestigious Kicker.
He saw his first Celtic match at the age of six in December 1966, allowing him to witness the Lisbon Lions before they became famous. He has covered Celtic at home and abroad, everywhere from the back of a farm truck in a Dutch backwater on summer tour, to the vertiginous Nou Camp press box. As a writer, he was delighted to discover that his childhood hero, Bobby Lennox, did not have clay feet, and was privileged to witness the peerless Henrik Larsson.
Phil Gordon wrote ‘The Shadows of the Night’, ‘Seeing Red’, ‘European Gold’ and interviewed Murdo MacLeod, Lou Macari, Danny McGrain, Davie Provan, Roy Aitken, Paul Lambert, Shunsuke Nakamura and, last but not least, Tommy Burns, shortly before his death.
Tony Hamilton is the head of multi media at Celtic and has been at the club in various roles since the trauma of the season that was ‘Hampden’ in 1994/95. A lifelong Celtic supporter, he is involved in various aspects of the business including production of the club’s DVDs, commentary for Channel 67 (the ten-year-old portal which allows overseas supporters to watch every match live), the matchday experience, the official website and the production of various events such as Player of the Year and the club’s AGM.
Tony is the father of six unruly weans and the ‘nonno’ of one. Many of the children and his wife, Lynne, are season-ticket holders at Celtic Park too. Though, having just completed the Official History DVDs, two and the half years in the making, they’re not tired of looking at him…
Tony Hamilton wrote the Wim Jansen feature and interviewed George Connelly and Martin O’Neill.
Teddy Jamieson’s day job as staff writer on the Herald Magazine usually involves interviewing artists, actors, writers and film stars. But he has also managed to speak to the odd footballer. Over the years he has quizzed Frank McAvennie on cocaine and womanising and Paul Gascoigne on drinking and suicidal tendencies.
He can still find his way to Stark’s Park blindfold thanks to his days in the mid-1990s spent covering the lower reaches of Scottish football as a match reporter. More recently, he has been nominated for a few journalism awards but never won anything, which makes his trophy for winning the intermural five-a-side football contest at Stirling University in 1985 all the more cherished.
Teddy Jamieson interviewed Sandy Jardine.
Hugh MacDonald is chief sportswriter of The Herald. He was captain of the St Joseph’s Primary School, Clarkston, team of 1967 whose achievements were cruelly overlooked because of the success of a side from the East End in the same year. He has watched Celtic from the late 1950s onwards, having been taken to a game by his grandfather before he even started school – Hugh, that is, not his grandfather. His Celtic idols were Jimmy Johnstone and Bobby Murdoch. Still are. He has contributed to Celtic Minded.
Hugh MacDonald wrote ‘Dance to the Music of Time’, ‘Dreams and Songs to Sing’, ‘The Fall of La Grande Inter’ (with Pat Woods), ‘The Johnstone Mysteries’, ‘Bobby Murdoch and the Battle of Britain’, ‘Fantasy Football’, and several mini-features in the Statistics chapter. He also interviewed Artur Boruc and Aiden McGeady and co-wrote the Dixie Deans interview.
Ron Mackenna
In a 17-year newspaper career Ron MacKenna has been the chief reporter of The Scotsman, political editor of the Daily Record and was for six years a news reporter on The Herald and Evening Times. To escape the madness of such occupations he sought solace as a season-ticket holder at Celtic Park where the glorious twists and turns of Tommy Burns’ managerial career burned themselves forever into his memory. He is currently a practising lawyer specialising in criminal law and writes columns on food and politics for The Herald and the Scottish Mirror. He has written two books: Keep The Faith, co-authored with Carlos Alba, and DNA.
He lives in Glasgow with his wife, Debbie, and two Celtic- daft children, Calum and Luca.
Ron MacKenna went behind the scenes on a UEFA Champions League night at Celtic Park to write ‘The Secret Army’.
James MacMillan is a composer whose music is played all over the world. He studied as an undergraduate at the University of Edinburgh, and completed his doctoral studies at the University of Durham. He has numerous honorary doctorates and fellowships from various British universities and colleges and was awarded a CBE in 2004.
James has a wide range of interests, some of which impact on his music. He is an outspoken commentator on political, cultural and religious topics and writes for various journals. He is contributing editor to the Catholic Herald and Scottish Catholic Observer. He has been a Celtic fan since the Lisbon Lions days – his first live game was the 1969 League Cup Final, when Celtic won 6-2 against Hibernian.
For the unveiling of the Brother Walfrid statue at Celtic Park in 2005, James wrote a commemorative work for the Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann musicians of Coatbridge – Walfrid, On His Arrival at the Gates of Paradise.
James MacMillan presents his musical tribute to Brother Walfrid in the Opus.
Archie Macpherson first broadcast for the BBC in 1962. He was a school teacher at the time. His first foreign broadcast was in Lisbon at the 1967 European Cup Final, as co- commentator with the late Kenneth Wolstenholme. He then became principal presenter and commentator for Sportscene, BBC Scotland’s main football programme.
During this career he commentated on seven consecutive World Cups, starting in 1974 in Germany, and broadcast coverage of ten European football finals as well as reporting and commentating on four Olympic Games.
He left the BBC in 1990 to go freelance and has broadcast for Eurosport, Radio Clyde, Scottish Television and ESPN. In 1992, while with Radio Clyde, he won the Sony Gold Prize as Commentator of the Year. He has written four books including a post-war history of the Old Firm, a survey of his broadcasting career, an assessment of Scottish football over the past four decades, and a best-seller, Jock Stein, The Definitive Biography.
Archie Macpherson contributed a profile on his friend Jock Stein.
Willy Maley is Professor of English Literature at Glasgow University. Together with Ian Auld, Bertie’s brother, he wrote The Lions of Lisbon (1992), a play celebrating the silver anniversary of Celtic’s European Cup victory. Directed by Libby McArthur and starring Frank Gallagher, Gary Lewis and Martin McCardie, it played at theatres throughout Scotland. A season- ticket holder in the Lisbon Lions Stand, Willy was a columnist for the Celtic View during the 2003/04 and 2004/05 seasons. He also contributed essays to Celtic Minded Volumes 1 and 2, and is in the squad for Volume 3. Although he’s not related to the one and only Willie Maley, Willy campaigns tirelessly – friends would say tediously – for a Willie Maley Stand at Celtic Park. One of nine children born to a father who was himself one of nine, Willy has celebrated and suffered through nine-in-a-row and is looking forward to ten and more. /p>
Willy Maley wrote a poem in tribute to the late Tommy Burns.
Joan McAlpine’s career in journalism began on The Greenock Telegraph in 1987, her local newspaper. She went on to work as a feature writer and columnist for The Scotsman and The Sunday Times where she won the coveted title of Journalist of the Year at the Scottish Press Awards in 1999. More recently, she has been a newspaper executive, and was the first female deputy editor of The Herald (2001-06). She is currently assistant editor (features) of The Sunday Times in Scotland.
Joan’s columns are always lively and incisive, whether she is talking about the row over Artur Boruc’s blessing, or analysing the latest wrangle in the Scottish parliament. Joan has an Honours degree in history from Glasgow University, which she still finds useful in turning fact into cogent argument. She first visited Celtic Park at the invitation of Fergus McCann and was impressed by the club’s family-friendly nature. Since then she has attended regularly with her two daughters and female friends Margaret and Rosie.
Joan McAlpine interviewed Neil Lennon and John Reid.
Rob McCaffrey is a television presenter. He is most notable for presenting shows such as Goals On Sunday and You’re On Sky Sports and replacing Jeff Stelling as presenter of Soccer Special (the midweek version of Soccer Saturday).
Rob earned a Bachelor’s degree at the University of Liverpool and studied for a post-graduate degree in journalism at Lancashire Polytechnic. After working in radio for a few years, he graduated to the rank of news producer at BBC Radio Shropshire but left to begin a career in television in 1987 at Granada TV where he presented and reported on local programmes, including North-West football show Kick-Off. Rob was nominated for a Royal Television Society award for a 1994 documentary he produced during Liverpool’s pre-season tour to South Africa featuring John Barnes and an interview with Nelson Mandela.
Before joining Sky Sports as host of You’re On Sky Sports, Rob spent some time as a radio presenter at talkSPORT. In June 2007, he left Sky to join Showtime Arabia and present their English Premiership coverage.
Rob McCaffrey interviewed John Barnes and John Hartson.
Hugh McIlvanney OBE is widely regarded as the outstanding sportswriter of his generation. Winner of the two main British Sports Journalist of the Year awards a combined total of a dozen times, he is the only sports specialist to have been voted Journalist of the Year and the first foreign writer to be honoured by the Boxing Writers’ Association of America. In 2005 he was among the 40 journalists inducted at the founding of the British Newspaper Hall of Fame.
Born in Kilmarnock, Hugh began his career as a news reporter with the Kilmarnock Standard, the Daily Express and The Scotsman. In 1962 he joined The Observer in London, soon becoming the newspaper’s chief sports correspondent, a post he held (punctuated by a spell writing international news and features for the Daily Express) until 1993, when he moved to the Sunday Times as chief sportswriter. Having stepped down in 2002, he now writes a weekly column for the paper. Over the years Hugh has written and presented several television documentaries, including the highly acclaimed The Football Men. He has published collections of his work on boxing, football and horse racing and co-wrote Managing My Life, Sir Alex Ferguson’s bestselling autobiography. A long-standing member of the William Hill Sports Book of the Year judging panel, he is also chairman of the selection panel for the Scottish Football Hall of Fame, inaugurated in 2004.
Hugh McIlvanney wrote a profile of Jimmy Johnstone.
William McIlvanney is the greatest Scottish novelist of his generation. Born in Kilmarnock in 1936, he was employed for 15 years as a teacher before concentrating full-time on writing. Usually set in the west of Scotland, his novels are windows into the male psyche and illuminate parts of Scottish culture and society few dare contemplate. Docherty, published in 1975, brought him the Whitbread prize. Its eponymous hero may be a man small in stature but he is “too formidable to be patronised.” The same could said about many of McIlvanney’s characters, including Dan Scoular in The Big Man, which was filmed with Liam Neeson in the title role.
Long before it became fashionable, Willie portrayed crime in Glasgow through the eyes of his detective Jack Laidlaw, on whom many imitators have been modelled. Never one to get stuck in a rut, Willie has written poetry, essays and award- winning columns for newspapers, which value his trenchant views, sense of humour and nationalist integrity. His most recent novel is Weekend, which was published in 2006 to ecstatic reviews.
Willie McIlvanney wrote a profile on John Thomson.
Jack McLean is one of Scotland’s most gifted and well-known journalists. He is also an artist, broadcaster and author, whose latest book, The Compendium of Nosh (An A-Z of Food), was published to widespread critical acclaim. Jack was an art teacher at a Glasgow secondary school when he began to write wry columns for The Times Educational Supplement. Before long he was writing for the Glasgow Herald who soon realised that they had a rare writing talent on their hands and offered him a full-time job. His Friday columns for the paper soon became required reading for their elegance, razor-sharp wit and no little controversy, and were savoured by those who cherish the English language.
Jack, never shy to promote himself, is also a well-known Glasgow character with his trademark black fedora, bespoke suits and grand overcoats. His favourite drinking emporiums knew never to run out of his favourite blended whisky if they wanted to retain his custom. Jack was persuaded to move east to The Scotsman newspaper in 1998, but his lugubrious Glasgow humour did not travel well to Edinburgh and this proved to be a short-lived arrangement. He was soon back at his spiritual home at The Herald before leaving to concentrate on book projects.
Jack McLean wrote ‘My Dear Green Place’.
Andy Mitten, the great-nephew of 1940s Manchester United star Charlie Mitten, set up the independent fanzine United We Stand (which he still edits) in 1989, aged 15. He has seen United play in 34 countries, encompassing all six continents. He writes for The Independent and FourFourTwo magazine and has also worked for GQ, Esquire, The Guardian, MUTV and the BBC as well as magazines and newspapers in Japan, Ireland, Scandinavia, Germany, Spain and South Africa.
Andy has written or co-written numerous books, including the bestselling The Rough Guide to Manchester United and Pat Crerand’s autobiography, Never Turn the Other Cheek.
Andy Mitten co-wrote the Pat Crerand interview.
Sam Pilger is a freelance writer who interviews the great and the good of the sporting world for The Times magazine, FourFourTwo, Esquire, The Independent, Spin, Champions and Inside Sport. He was previously the deputy editor of both United magazine, and then Britain’s biggest-selling football magazine, FourFourTwo. Sam is also the author of several sporting books, including The Treasures of Manchester United, For Club and Country, The Ashes Match of My Life and Victory! The Battle for the Ashes 2005.
Sam Pilger interviewed Scott McDonald.
David William Potter was born in Forfar in 1948, and has supported Celtic all his life, a passion that he inherited from his father and grandfather. He first saw Celtic play at Dundee on a rainy day in 1958.
He was educated at Forfar Academy and won the Dux Medal in 1965 before going on to St Andrews University to study Latin and Greek. He taught at Glenrothes High School for 32 years between 1971 and 2003. He is now semi-retired and teaches part-time at Osborne House School, Dysart.
He has written several books about Celtic, including biographies of Willie Maley, Jock Stein (co-authored by Tom Campbell), Jimmy Quinn, Patsy Gallacher, Jimmy Delaney and Bobby Murdoch. He has also produced The Encyclopaedia of Scottish Football with Phil H Jones.
David W Potter wrote ‘The Joy Of Six’, ‘Rulers of the Empire’ and profiles on Jimmy Quinn, Dan Doyle, Jimmy McGrory and Patsy Gallacher.
Davie Provan is one of the finest wingers ever to play for Celtic. He was born in Gourock and first came to prominence as a professional footballer with Kilmarnock. He joined Celtic in 1978 for a club record fee of £120,000. He made an immediate impact as he helped Celtic to the title that season. Davie went on to win three more titles with Celtic and two Scottish Cups, plus ten caps for Scotland, before illness forced his premature retirement from the game in 1987.
He then carved out a new career for himself as one of Scotland’s sharpest radio and television football pundits. He has been broadcasting for Radio Clyde for more than 20 years and combines that with his duties as a match analyst on Sky Sports. Since 2007 he has also been writing a provocative but authoritative football column for the News of the World.
Davie Provan interviewed Charlie Nicholas and Frank McAvennie.
A former Sunday Times Scottish business editor and winner of four press awards as a freelance journalist, Francis Shennan’s work has appeared in The Herald, Scotland on Sunday, The Times, The Guardian, The Scotsman, Mail on Sunday and Independent on Sunday.
His subjects have included football finance, fraud, organised crime and terrorist racketeering, and involved accompanying official missions to Europe and the United States, making a midnight amphibious landing with the Royal Marines Reserve and spending a week aboard a Royal Navy nuclear submarine.
A graduate in law, Francis has taught Media Law at Napier, Strathclyde and Glasgow Caledonian Universities, and at Associated Newspapers and Johnston Press. His media and reputation management courses have been used by companies including Bank of Scotland, Scottish Widows and KPMG. He is the author of two books: Flesh and Bones: A Life of John Napier and Rebels in Paradise: The Story of the Celtic Buy-out.
Francis Shennan wrote ‘The Battle to Save Celtic’.
Andrew Smith has been a football writer on Scotland On Sunday for the past ten years and previously spent time at the Evening Times, these two posts allowing him to attend both World Cup and European Championship finals.
He began his career at Celtic’s club magazine the Celtic View in October 1989, and for the club’s sake it is just as well he left in January 1998. For in the intervening eight-and-a-bit years Celtic won a grand total of no league championships, a situation recitified within months of him leaving. In some quarters, he is still refered to as ‘Celtic’s Jonah’.
Andrew Smith interviewed Dermot Desmond and Peter Lawwell.
Graham Spiers is the most decorated Scottish sportswriter of his generation, having been honoured seven times at the Scottish Press Awards, including being voted Sportswriter of the Year on four occasions.
The son of a Baptist minister, who grew up a Rangers supporter, Graham began writing about sport after graduating in Divinity from St Andrews University in 1987. He has written for the Sunday Times, Scotland on Sunday, The Guardian and the Daily Telegraph. From 2001 to 2007 Spiers was the chief sportswriter of The Herald, where he wrote Paul Le Guen: Enigma, the book chronicling Le Guen’s six months as manager of Rangers. In January 2007 he resigned from The Herald to take up a position on The Times.
Graham regularly broadcasts on the BBC and STV, and in the summer of 2008 completed his fourth BBC radio series, Sons of the Manse, in which he interviewed a range of public people about their experience of being the offspring of clergy.
Graham Spiers interviewed Gordon Strachan.
Susan Swarbrick is an award-winning writer at The Herald in Glasgow, where she has worked for the past seven years. Prior to that she was on the staff at The National Post in Toronto, Canada. Swarbrick has been writing about sport since her teens when, in a decidedly less glamorous version of Almost Famous, she pestered the then sports editor of Scotland on Sunday to give her a job. If only for the peace and quiet, said editor dispatched her to do an investigation into inequality in Scottish golf. Within hours Swarbrick had managed to get herself ejected from all of the top clubs in St Andrews, including the prestigious Royal and Ancient.
Susan Swarbrick interviewed Celtic fans around the world for ‘We are Celtic Supporters’ and spent an afternoon with football’s ultimate WAGs - the wives of the Lisbon Lions.
Michael Tierney has been a journalist and writer for 15 years, the last ten of which were spent at The Herald newspaper in Glasgow. He has twice been named Feature Writer of the Year at the prestigious British Press Awards, and is three-time winner in succession of the Feature Writer of the Year at the Scottish Press Awards. He is currently Magazine Writer of the Year at the same awards. In 2007, he was the recipient of the coveted Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism and was awarded the Lorenzo Natali Prize for Journalism (Europe). Previously, he has been shortlisted for a Washington Post Fellowship. He is now editor of the Burj Khalifa Opus.
Michael has been a Celtic fan since childhood and one of his best memories is the first game he attended with his father, John – Celtic v Sporting Lisbon in November 1983. He wrote about this for the Celtic Opus and although his father, who had a major stroke in 2002, will never be able to read this piece Michael is comforted by the lessons he was taught back then about how to love Celtic. And about how to love family more.
Michael Tierney wrote the aforementioned ‘My First Game with Dad’, ‘The Ghost of Brother Walfrid’, ‘The Eternal Flame’, ‘We. Were. There’, ‘The Passing of Jock Stein’, The Prodigal Returns’, and ‘Kenny’, a profile of Kenny Dalglish. He also interviewed John Divers Jnr, John Hughes, Joe McBride, Jim Craig, Bertie Auld, Agnes Johnstone and Henrik Larsson.
Brian Wilson is currently a director of Celtic Plc and, in 1988, wrote the club’s official centenary history, Celtic - A Century with Honour. A native of Argyll, he was an award-winning journalist before becoming the Labour Member of Parliament for Cunninghame North in 1987, serving for 18 years. Brian held five Ministerial offices before leaving politics in 2005, when he was invited to join the Celtic board. He is married with three children and now lives on the Isle of Lewis.
Brian Wilson wrote the introductory essay to the Opus on the composition of Celtic’s ‘DNA’ and a profile of Michael Davitt.
Pat Woods was born in Bangor, North Wales, in June 1946, but has lived most of his life in Glasgow. Inducted into the folklore and unique appeal of Celtic by his father at an early age, he has watched the team for close on 55 years.
He has been the author/co-author of nine books on the history of the club, including: One Afternoon in Lisbon (1988, with Kevin McCarra), recalling Celtic’s momentous 1967 European Cup-winning campaign; The Glory and the Dream: A History of Celtic (1986, with Tom Campbell); and Oh, Hampden in the Sun (1997, with Peter Burns), the story of Celtic’s 7 - 1 victory over Rangers in the 1957 League Cup Final viewed in the social context of life in the West of Scotland at the time.
Pat has previously applied his vast knowledge of the club as a contributor/consultant to videos – The Official History of Celtic Football Club (1988) and Lionhearts: European Glory 1966/67 (1992) – and has contributed to Glasgow newspaper, the Evening Times, the official club magazine, the Celtic View, and The Celt fanzine.
Pat Woods collated the archive pieces that appeared in the Hall of Fame chapter, co-wrote ‘The Fall of La Grande Inter’ and contributed a brief history of ‘The Jungle’. He also checked all Opus text for historical accuracy.
Frank Hannaway was born in Viewpark in 1956 and has been a life-long supporter of Celtic. Frank’s interest in the history and statistics of the club started in the 1960s when he inherited a collection of Celtic Football Guides. This interest has developed over the years and resulted in many hours being spent in the Mitchell Library in Glasgow researching the newspaper archives for more historical details.
In the last few years, the work has expanded into researching archived footage of Celtic. This has involved confirming that footage existed at one time and establishing that it is still held by an existing media company. The results of this work has contributed to the Celtic: The Official History and Celtic: The Irish Connection productions.
Frank is now the club’s official statistician and is currently working on a database of results which will record available detail of all games played by the club, including minor cup ties, tour games and friendly matches. The ultimate goal is to give Celtic fans access to the most comprehensive look at Celtic’s results ever.
Frank Hannaway compiled the statistics summary in the ‘Hall of Fame’ chapter and the entire ‘Statistics’ chapter.