Stephen Fay has written extensively on finance, the theatre and cricket. His books include Tom Graveney at Lord's, and he is a former editor of Wisden Cricket Monthly. David Kynaston has written twenty books, including Austerity Britain, Family Britain and Modernity Britain. His most recent cricket book is WG's Birthday Party, an account of the historic 1898 Gentlemen v Players match at Lord's.
A wonderfully readable and illuminating account of the game in the last half of the 20th century ... Beautifully written, meticulously researched and stuffed with rich sporting and social history, this must already be a candidate for Sports Book of the Year. Unputdownable -- Michael Simkins * Mail on Sunday * A triumph ... [Kynaston and Fay] both have inside-outside sensitivities that keep this near-seamless collaboration shrewd, worldly, balanced and fresh * Times Literary Supplement * The most entertaining historian alive -- Praise for David Kynaston * Spectator * One of the great chroniclers of our modern story ... Every paragraph contains some glittering nugget -- Praise for David Kynaston * Sunday Times * A historian of peerless sensitivity and curiosity about the lives of individuals -- Praise for David Kynaston * Financial Times * [A] delightful and thoughtful book ... A nostalgic delight * Standpoint * An important account of English cricket through the post-war decades from the glorious summer of 1947 to one-day cricket and Packer ... Cricket has always produced literature that weaves together sport and society and this book certainly presents an insight into post-war England that reaches far beyond the boundary rope * Country Life * John Arlott and EW Swanton defined cricket commentary in the second half of the 20th century ... As this wonderful biography shows, they were united by their love of the spirit of cricket, and stood together in resisting anything that compromised it, from bullying moguls to racism * Daily Telegraph *