Book Of The Year Award > 2010 > Harold Larwood

Perhaps the most keenly-awaited biography of the year aims to give a rounded view of a man whose own books tended to be hastily-put together and rather sensationalist offerings. Books on Bodyline have been a virtual industry since Arthur Mailey set the ball rolling, so to speak and most participants, including one of the umpires have had their say. David Frith's Bodyline Autopsy was thought to be the last word on the subject and indeed, it is doubtful if there will be a fuller version of the events of 1932/3 and their fallout.

So, why another book on Harold Larwood? Perhaps because there haven't really been any books on the man and not the events. As a boy growing up in post-war Nottinghamshire, Duncan Hamilton would regularly hear comments from passing miners going home from their shift as he bowled in knockabout cricket off an enormous run, 'You'll never be as fast as Harold Larwood.' Intrigued, he went home to ask his father who this man was and then vowed to find out more about him. Much later in life, this is the result.

The book's opening chapter sees a slight, elderly man standing by the Pavilion gate at Trent Bridge in 1977 when he was making an infrequent visit to his homeland. Later, he sat on a chair with his great friend and comrade in arms, Bill Voce, to be interviewed by the BBC as shown in one of the many photographs which feature throughout the book, some delightfully annotated by Harold Larwood himself. The contrast of this 73-year old man, sitting quietly and reflecting quietly on events some forty-odd years before and the ogre of popular imagination, particularly in the southern hemisphere, gives one of the clues as to why this book is as successful as it is.

Larwood's early family life and first steps with Nottingham shire are recorded in the first few chapters with his moving from a teetotal home to a Nottinghamshire dressing-room that was fuelled by copious quantities of English beer and led by a captain, Arthur Carr, whose experiences in the Great War left him with the view that life was to be lived in the present and that beer was to be bought in buckets (literally, for purposes of discretion) for the team. Into this atmosphere came a cricketer who was barely above five feet seven inches, naturally shy and who had no great self-belief, a recipe, one would think, for a few first-class games and then a gentle retreat to club cricket and a job in civvy street. The prospect of going back down the mines was just one of the things that concentrated Larwood's mind; he knew the heavy work had given him great body strength but he also knew that he did not want to go back down the pit. The way to avoid that was to be good at his new job and he was fortunate that Arthur Carr was looking for a fast bowler to make Nottinghamshire a power in cricketing terms. Arthur Carr was doubly fortunate; as well as Larwood, he got Bill Voce and they got a captain who was a professional amateur with no notion of jolly good games with sporting conclusions, rather hard-fought games with Notts winning and the ale flowing.

If all there was to this book was a full version of Harold Larwood's career, culminating in the Bodyline Tests and the regaining of the Ashes, then it would still be a fine book but what lifts this biography into a different class and potentially a great book, is what happened to Harold Larwood in the rest of his career from 1933 to 1938 and then when, 'The tumult and the shouting dies; the Captains and Kings depart.' Duncan Hamilton takes what could have been a coda and instead makes it the most interesting part of the book seeing Harold Larwood go from triumph in Australia to disillusion at home and thence to anonymity in Blackpool in under ten years.

As well as Larwood himself, there are other heroes, Jack Fingleton for paving the way for that most inconceivable change of life for Larwood from England to Australia, to settle in a land where he might have been attacked in the street just seventeen years before. Jack Hobbs, who championed Larwood at every opportunity, Douglas Jardine, who believed in and went out of his way to boost Larwood's self-belief and many others with acts of individual kindness come out well but there are others whose deeds are at variance with their public persona. Gubby Allen, Don Bradman and most of all, Pelham Warner have their double standards highlighted without undue vilification but Duncan Hamilton leaves the reader with no illusions about their actions. One poignant moment may suffice to show how heroes can be forgotten. As his ship prepared to sail for Australia, a severely hung-over Harold Larwood's farewell was seen not by crowds of people but only by John Arlott who felt that this was an occasion that should be marked and was amazed that he was alone. It's not fanciful to consider that Arlott, at heart a melancholic, would have felt a genuine empathy with the, by this time, virtually reclusive Harold Larwood.

Life in Australia suited Larwood where he could become a working man with no interest in cricket and live a quiet life with his beloved family. It was only later, when new generations discovered him that he felt able to tiptoe back into the limelight and meet players who were keen to learn from him and to hear his stories. Duncan Hamilton follows him through these final years which we can see not as a decline but as a natural end to a remarkable life.

This is a fine book by any standards but the more so when one considers the work and research which earned Duncan Hamilton the respect and assistance of Harold Larwood's family as he strove to tell the full story in its proper context. That he has succeeded is clear in this admirable book, with telling use of photographs, truly excellent index and fine production. Fitting to borrow a quotation from another source to say of Harold Larwood, 'He was some kind of a man.' And this also, is some kind of a book.

review by John Symons

Publisher
Quercus Publishing,
21 Bloomsbury Square,
LONDON
WC1A 2NS
£20