Hugh Massingberd

The Legion that Never was ‘Listed

Penguins Stopped Play: Eleven Village Cricketers Take On the World

By

John Murray 242pp £50 order from our bookshop

Cricket – as my old boss E W Swanton never tired of pointing out to us hacks who toiled away at his encyclopedia of the game – holds up a mirror to character. It is also not a bad metaphor for life. In a moving afterword to this funny and inspiring book by the late Harry Thompson – television producer (Have I Got News For You, Harry Enfield and Chums, They Think It’s All Over, etc), biographer of Richard Ingrams and Peter Cook, and prize-winning novelist (This Thing of Darkness) – his widow Lisa describes how at his burial in Brompton Cemetery someone tossed a cricket ball into the grave.

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