More Than A Game The Story Of Cricket S Early Years

Throughout John Major's life, his love of cricket has been a constant source of enjoyment, anguish- and solace. Now he delves deep into the game's history, tracing is rustic origins and social role from the days of the great patrons to the death of W. G. Grace.

Globalizing Cricket examines the global role of cricket's of development, diffusion of cricket through colonization, and impact on the changing notions of English national identity.

On a sunny afternoon in May 1868, nineteen-year-old Gilbert Grace stood in a Wiltshire field, wondering why he was playing cricket against the Great Western Railway Club. A batting genius, 'W. G.' should have been starring at Lord's in the grand opening match of the season. But MCC did not want to elect this humble son of a provincial doctor. W. G's career was faltering before it had barely begun. Grace finally forced his way into MCC and over the next three decades, millions came to watch him - not just at Lord's, but across the British Empire and beyond. Only W. G. could boast a fan base that stretched from an American Civil War general and the Prince of Wales's mistress to the children who fingered his coat-tails as he walked down the street, just to say 'I touched him'. The public never knew the darker story behind W. G.'s triumphal progress. Accused of avarice, W. G. was married to the daughter of a bankrupt. Disparaged as a simpleton, his subversive mind recast how to play sport - thrillingly hard, pushing the rules, beating his opponents his own way. In Amazing Grace, Richard Tomlinson unearths a life lived so far ahead of his times that W. G. is still misunderstood today. For the first time, Tomlinson delves into long-buried archives in England and Australia to reveal the real W. G: a self-made, self-destructive genius, at odds with the world and himself.

Mastermind is the ultimate test of knowledge, memory and nerve. Over four decades hundreds have tested their mettle in the famous black chair, and dared to put their intellect under the glare of the Mastermind spotlight. Now, can you rise to the challenge? The Mastermind Quiz Book poses over 3,500 questions, from fiendishly difficult general knowledge teasers to in-depth tests of specialist subjects. With topics ranging from Classical Mythology to Medical Science, by way of Famous Russians and The Works of Johnny Cash, only the finest minds will triumph. Whether you're playing in groups or simply testing your own brainpower, this collection of questions will challenge the very core of your mental strength - but when the clock runs down and the lights come up, will you emerge as the Mastermind?

'Swimming with Dr Johnson and Mrs Thrale' challenges the popular image of Samuel Johnson as a man who favoured energetic discussion over physical exercise, enthroned in an armchair peering short-sightedly at a book. Thanks to the diarist and author Hester Thrale we have many anecdotes that connect Dr Johnson to a variety of sports, and Julia Allen, following Lytton Strachey's advice to attack her subject in unexpected places, uses entries from Dr Johnson's dictionary and anecdotes about the great man as her window into the world of eighteenth-century sport and exercise. Revealing a world both foreign and familiar, Allen takes the reader through a range of sports and activities, from boxing and cricket to dancing and coach travel to swimming, riding and skating. She reasserts women's place in eighteenth century sport, especially the luckier ones such as Mrs Thrale, and draws on medical treatises and reports to show how dangerous these sports could be, and to explore the theories upon which contemporary notions about health and exercise were based. Combined with fascinating biographies not only of Dr Johnson and Mrs Thrale, but also of a host of eighteenth-century sporting celebrities, Swimming with Dr Johnson and Mrs Thrale gives a fascinating insight into a century where things were done very differently, often with dangerous consequences. This eccentric book brings together pieces of eighteenth-century life to create a vivid picture of the whole, making it essential reading for anybody interested in history or sport.

The Ashes cricket series, played out between England and Australia, is the oldest, and arguably the most keenly-contested rivalry, in international sport. And yet the majority of the first representative Australian cricket team to tour England in 1878 in fact regarded themselves as Englishmen. In May of that year the SS City of Berlin docked at Liverpool, and the Australians stepped onto English ground to begin the inaugural first-class cricket tour of England by a representative overseas team. As they made their way south towards Lord's to play the MCC in the second match of the tour, the intrepid tourists, or 'the strangers' as they were referred to in the press, encountered arrogance and ignorance, cheating umpires and miserable weather. But by defeating a powerful MCC side which included W.G. Grace himself in a single afternoon's play, they turned English cricket on its head. The Lord's crowd, having openly laughed at the tourists, wildly celebrated a victory that has been described as 'arguably the most momentous six hours in cricket history' and claimed the Australians as their own. The Strangers Who Came Home is a compelling social history which brings that momentous summer to life, telling the story of these extraordinary men who travelled thousands of miles, risking life and limb, playing 43 matches in England (as well as several in Philadelphia, America, on their return journey) during a demanding but ultimately triumphant homecoming; how their glorious achievements on the field of play threw open the doors to international sports touring, and how these men from the colonies provided the stimulus for Australian nationhood through their sporting success and brought unprecedented vitality to international cricket.