David France

Perhaps the most priceless treasures are the official club ledgers detailing the minutes of all board meetings between 1886 and 1964 and shed light on the acrimonious split which resulted in the formation of Liverpool Football Club.

David Harry France, (born 30 June 1948) is an author, football historian and philanthropist.

Throughout the past two decades, he has been the driving force behind numerous initiatives related to Everton Football Club including Gwladys Street's Hall of Fame, the Everton Former Players' Foundation, the EFC Heritage Society, the Founding Fathers of Merseyside Football and the David France Collection (now known as the Everton Collection).

Educated in the United Kingdom, the United States and Germany (BSc, MSc, MBA, PhD), he moved to North America in 1978 and worked in the nuclear and space industries before joining the executive of an oil & gas corporation.

He retired from corporate life in 1990 to concentrate on consulting and charity work.

Although based in Texas, he travelled in excess of 2 million miles supporting the club and his Everton initiatives.

Known as ‘Dr Everton’, he was appointed Life President of the Everton Shareholders’ Association.

In 1996 he recruited an independent panel of players, journalists, shareholders and season-ticket holders to painstakingly assess the qualifications of the 800 or so candidates and select the initial 75 members.

Subsequent additions have been elected by Everton supporters via postal and internet ballots.

The Hall of Fame inductions were celebrated passionately in 1998 and every subsequent year at Liverpool's Adelphi Hotel.

Known locally as the "Nuremberg Rallies of Football", never before had any club's supporters interacted intimately with heroes who had won the World Cup, European silverware, FA Cups and League titles.

Poor health influenced Dr. France's decision in 2001 to find a secure and long-term home for his collection.

Despite receiving offers from private investors, he was committed to make the collection available to the people of Merseyside.

Six years later, the Everton Collection Charitable Trust (Charity No 1109480) announced that it had secured a grant from the UK Heritage Lottery Fund to acquire his collection, now named The Everton Collection.

Subsequently, Dr France donated the priceless ledgers and transferred the other treasures at a heavily discounted price.

There were, however, a few conditions to the transaction.

Every piece of memorabilia had to be professionally catalogued, preserved by experts and secured in a vault.

No items can be disposed of and the collection had to be augmented with quality acquisitions when they become available.

Equally as important, the items should be displayed physically in Liverpool and all printed materials digitised and incorporated into a website to facilitate worldwide access.

Subsequently, Everton Football Club donated its archives.

In a 2009 website poll involving eight candidates, he came a close second to manager David Moyes as the person who Everton fans trust the most.

The results were David Moyes 35%, David France 34%, Bill Kenwright 19%.

Dr France has written 19 books to tell the Everton story.

Some involved collaborations with David Prentice, Becky Tallentire, Barry Hewitt and cartoonist Peter King, while others embraced inputs from a cross-section of Everton enthusiasts.

The profits from these books were donated to Merseyside charities.

Conceived by Dr France after consultation with baseball's counterpart in Cooperstown, New York, it pays tribute to the men who have contributed to Everton's history.

The 2009 inductions of Duncan Ferguson and Bill Kenwright brought the total to 126 members.

In January 2011, Liverpool's Freedom of the City panel rewarded David France with the prestigious title of Citizen of Honour.

France was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2012 New Year Honours for services to football in the United Kingdom and Europe.

France was born in Widnes, Lancashire (now Cheshire).

The 2017 additions of John Bailey, Kevin Campbell, Nigel Martyn, Ian Snodin and Pat Van Den Hauwe increased the membership to 131.

Dr France registered the Everton Former-Players’ Foundation (Charity No 1080101) to alleviate their medical and other hardships of old footballers in 1999.

With the support of the Professional Footballer's Association and the generosity Everton Football Club and its supporters, the EFPF has raised and spent over £100,000 per year during the past 10 years assisting individuals with knee and hip surgeries and even home improvements.

All grants are confidential but any player who made one first-team appearance for Everton is eligible for help.

The EFPF is the first of its kind in the football world and, under the current stewardship of Rev. Harry Ross and Laurence Lee, is considered to be the UEFA model.

Subsequently, Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern Munich have established similar organisations and along with Everton are members of the European Former Players' Association.

The David France Collection is a compilation of memorabilia related to the birth and development of Everton Football Club.

It is lauded as the finest collection of football artefacts in the world.

Employing a network of dealers, Dr France took over 20 years to assemble some of football's rarest items dating back to the club's pioneering days in Stanley Park.

In addition to hundreds and hundreds of unique items of interest to all football enthusiasts, the real significance of Dr France's paper-chase is that the resulting collection boasts long unbroken sequences of programmes and other memorabilia which tell the week-by-week story of life as well as football on Merseyside football.