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Book Of The Year Award > 2011 > A Last English Summer
Duncan Hamilton, Quercus
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 Make no mistake. This man can write. Anyone who read his award-winning biography of Harold Larwood will pick up this book with confidence. The potential customer will be aware that Duncan Hamilton knows exactly what he is about and recreates a world that truly and honestly portrays players and places of a different era.
In some cricket books, there is a temptation to skip the Foreword in order to get tucked into the real meat. That would be a serious error here. Should you succumb, you will miss a delightful essay entitled A Golden Age Sort of a Chap. In it, DH writes perceptively and touchingly about the cricketing relationship he had with his grandfather to whom he was devoted. They go to the cricket together and from an early age, the author-to-be learns of the 'paraphernalia' (p.6) of the game and likes it. In fact, there is nothing at that age that he dislikes about cricket. At the end of this account of his grandfather's spirit and attitude, DH says that he was left an inheritance of a love of cricket and of libraries. These two have played a major part in his life.
Just now and again, he comes out most strongly, even angrily, about those who do not contribute, whatever their function, to the spirit of the match. One such group to feel his pen at its sharpest is the stalwarts of the gates at Lord's. These worthies are determined to hold the fort at all costs. The stewards, we are led to believe, have no knowledge of such words as 'smile' and 'welcome'.
DH is at his best, perhaps, when dealing with individual players such as Ryan Sidebottom (who has always reminded me of the raggle-taggle gypsies-oh) but the writer does not condemn or berate those whom he delights in for their style and/or character and/or presence.
He is deeply concerned about the future of the game and looks very closely at the season of 2009 to advance his argument and give greater weight to his commentary. He sees many men play the game throughout that summer with a variety of hopes, expectations, staggering failure and blissful success. One has a sense that all human types (and something rather more interesting than mere 'types') are represented.
Just occasionally, he topples into a patch of purple prose. Once in a while, he introduces images, legends and myths to places where one might never have thought to put them: e.g. were mid-on and mid-off ever at the disposal of John Donne? (p.19) And how was it that General Custer (yes, that one!), who appears in the text, never turned up in the index? Perhaps he was unavoidably detained on the Little Big Horn? The acute observations, however, the assured language and the whole panorama of cricket in England provide a rare treat. This volume brightens one's day.
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