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The best-loved game: One summer of English cricket
Libro usado en buenas condiciones, por su antiguedad podria contener señales normales de uso
- GenresNonfiction
188 pages, Hardcover
First published July 18, 1979
About the author
Geoffrey Moorhouse
43 books14 followersGeoffrey Moorhouse, FRGS, FRSL, D.Litt, was an English journalist and author. He was born Geoffrey Heald in Bolton and took his stepfather's surname. He attended Bury Grammar School. He began writing as a journalist on the Bolton Evening News. At the age of 27, he joined the Manchester Guardian where he eventually became chief feature writer and combined writing book with journalism.
Many of his books were largely based on his travels. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society in 1972, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1982, and received an honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of Warwick. His book To The Frontier won the Thomas Cook Award for the best travel book of its year in 1984. He had recently concentrated on Tudor history, with The Pilgrimage of Grace and Great Harry's Navy. He lived in a hill village in North Yorkshire. In an interview given at the University of Tuebingen in 1999, he described his approach to his writing.
All three of Moorhouse's marriages ended in divorce. He had two sons and two daughters, one of whom died of cancer in 1981. He died aged 77 of a stroke on 26 November 2009 and is survived by both sons and one daughter.
Many of his books were largely based on his travels. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society in 1972, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1982, and received an honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of Warwick. His book To The Frontier won the Thomas Cook Award for the best travel book of its year in 1984. He had recently concentrated on Tudor history, with The Pilgrimage of Grace and Great Harry's Navy. He lived in a hill village in North Yorkshire. In an interview given at the University of Tuebingen in 1999, he described his approach to his writing.
All three of Moorhouse's marriages ended in divorce. He had two sons and two daughters, one of whom died of cancer in 1981. He died aged 77 of a stroke on 26 November 2009 and is survived by both sons and one daughter.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 25, 2023
ORDINARY LIFE AT ITS FINEST
I shed a sentimental tear at several points in this book, but more in grief than nostalgia. It covers the 1978 English cricket season, a time when Kerry Packer was beginning his infantilist/capitalist assault on the professional game. They called it a cricket 'circus' back then. How little we knew.
Geoffrey Moorhouse loves cricket properly, deeply and with the kind of eye for significant detail that poets used to have. Thankfully, Moorhouse has a poet's vocabulary and turn of phrase too. You can open this book almost anywhere and find strong, mature, stylish description that pays tribute to a specific match and the game in general at all its levels as well as its history.
Moorhouse is very sure of his values, as most true cricket lovers are, and they do not always rhyme with my own. He sneers repeatedly at fielders who wear 'crash helmets' when stationed close to the bat; I would never do that. And he clearly admires (as I do not) the batsman who bludgeons along with the artistic stroke-makers like David Gower, Clive Lloyd and Frank Hayes.
But the whole book builds steadily into an elegant portrait of what cricket, above all other sports, really plugs into in the human psyche: the awareness of how marvellous ordinary life can be when it is lived at its finest.
Moorhouse's use of the present tense for his match accounts has an unsettling effect at times when past events are mixed in. He is a careful and very accomplished writer, but I can't help thinking that a more unified grammatical approach must have been possible. It's a trivial whinge, though, and this lovely book still gets 12 out of 10.
I shed a sentimental tear at several points in this book, but more in grief than nostalgia. It covers the 1978 English cricket season, a time when Kerry Packer was beginning his infantilist/capitalist assault on the professional game. They called it a cricket 'circus' back then. How little we knew.
Geoffrey Moorhouse loves cricket properly, deeply and with the kind of eye for significant detail that poets used to have. Thankfully, Moorhouse has a poet's vocabulary and turn of phrase too. You can open this book almost anywhere and find strong, mature, stylish description that pays tribute to a specific match and the game in general at all its levels as well as its history.
Moorhouse is very sure of his values, as most true cricket lovers are, and they do not always rhyme with my own. He sneers repeatedly at fielders who wear 'crash helmets' when stationed close to the bat; I would never do that. And he clearly admires (as I do not) the batsman who bludgeons along with the artistic stroke-makers like David Gower, Clive Lloyd and Frank Hayes.
But the whole book builds steadily into an elegant portrait of what cricket, above all other sports, really plugs into in the human psyche: the awareness of how marvellous ordinary life can be when it is lived at its finest.
Moorhouse's use of the present tense for his match accounts has an unsettling effect at times when past events are mixed in. He is a careful and very accomplished writer, but I can't help thinking that a more unified grammatical approach must have been possible. It's a trivial whinge, though, and this lovely book still gets 12 out of 10.
Displaying 1 of 1 review