It is 100 years and five months since the Tottenham Weekly Herald complained of the “irreparable mischief” that had been done to Spurs by Arsenal’s election to the First Division ahead of them.



And they were right: that arrangement never has been reversed, and Arsenal have been in the top flight ever since. The north London rivalry, which will be played out again at the Emirates Stadium this Sunday, owes its framing, its dynamic, its very existence to the events of the 1910s. First, the decision to relocate Arsenal from Woolwich to Highbury, then, the election of Arsenal into the top flight at Spurs’ expense after World War I.



It all came down to one man. Sir Henry Norris, self-made construction baron, politician, freemason, was an Edwardian Abramovich, a man who transformed the landscape of English football almost unlike anyone else. Jack Walker made Blackburn Rovers good for a short period but Norris set up Arsenal to be London’s...