Welcome to Reading the Game, sportswriter Jeffrey Prest's review of sporting books, both old and new.

The review of Golf - the golden years: a pictorial anthology follows beneath the dotted line.

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The Baddiel name is famous in Britain largely because of the entertainer David Baddiel but it's his mother's turn to shine here, with a coffee-table book that pays fulsome tribute to her passion for golf memorabilia.

Regarded as one of the world's authorities on golf literature and ephemera, Sarah Baddiel has focused on the game's Golden Age in this 175-page book - the tail end of the 19th century and the first four decades of the 20th.

Divided into three sections - Great Moments, Great Courses; Great Characters and A Golfing Bag (the latter devoted to playing tips, etiquette and golfing miscellany) the body of the book is composed of articles, stories and poems from the era, including several by noted golf writer Bernard Darwin.

The articles as a whole are very much curate's egg, with a lot of the writing trapped in its time and making very stilted reading a century or so later. Darwin's pieces are not the only plus points, however; there is a Grantland Rice article on Bobby Jones and several articles by Jones himself as well as by Harry Vardon. Golf magazine's 1892 review of a book entitled Golf in the Year 2000,meanwhile, is a salutary reminder that human beings aren't always as perceptive as they like to think. A golf jacket that shouts "Fore" on your behalf, indeed...

The text is not the star of this tome, however. That honour goes to the wealth of colour photographs that litter each page, celebrating every aspect of golf memorabilia, whether paintings, magazine covers, crockery, trophies, greeting cards, figurines, posters, furnishings or numerous photographs of the great players that leap from the page at you in their clarity.

There is an immediacy about these charming illustrations that make the intervening years roll away. I lost track of how many times I told myself "I'd like one of those", before remembering that the golf-themed tobacco humidor or tea cup I'm looking at would probably set me back a sum running into three figures.

How glorious in their uncluttered simplicity magazine covers were a century ago. Working on a monthly magazine now, I know only too well how many man-hours go into deciding the lay-out of a cover nowadays and the strategic impact of its headlines and 'teasers'.

Progress? I wonder.

And just how many popular songs were devoted to golf in those far-off days? Sheet music covers abound in this book and you wonder if Andrew Lloyd-Webber has missed a trick...

The phrase "you'll return to it again and again" is overdone in book reviews but it sums this book up perfectly. It is a visual delight that will be repeatedly ideal for killing a few spare moments in your day.

The latest Ryder Cup spat is emanating from my radio as I type this - grown men acting like children yet again in their hissy fits over team selection. This time, however, I have an antidote for my ennui towards this clapped-out event, for I defy anyone not to browse through Golf - the golden years and feel refreshed by golf's essential charm.