Robert Chesshyre
The Whole 22 Yards
Jack Hobbs: England’s Greatest Cricketer
By Leo McKinstry
Yellow Jersey Press 401pp £20 order from our bookshop
Twirlymen: The Unlikely History of Cricket’s Greatest Spin Bowlers
By Amol Rajan
Yellow Jersey Press 379pp £16.99 order from our bookshop
It is almost impossible for a modern cricket follower to comprehend the impact that cricket and its star players had in England between the wars. The sport was an obsession, the one game that bound all classes together, and was played ubiquitously with the enthusiasm found now only in the subcontinent. As men and boys bat and bowl on every scrap of open ground from Sri Lanka to the Himalayas, so, then, English children chalked stumps on city lampposts and men rushed from work to read the county scores in their evening papers.
John Berry ‘Jack’ Hobbs was a colossus of this era. Modest in person, elegant in action and prolific in achievement, he was one of the best-known and most admired Englishmen of his age. His was a long innings: he played at the highest level from well before the
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Surveillance, facial recognition and control: my review of @jonfasman's "We See It All" https://literaryreview.co.uk/watching-the-watchers via @Lit_Review
I reviewed Diary of a Film by Niven Govinden for @Lit_Review https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-directors-cut
'Retired judges have usually had long careers on the bench, during which they have acquired an ingrained reticence when it comes to speaking on controversial topics. Not so Sumption.'
Dominic Grieve reviews Jonathan Sumption's 'Law in a Time of Crisis'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-case-for-the-citizen