Sweet Summers

The Classic Cricket Writing of JM Kilburn

Edited by Duncan Hamilton (Winner of The William Hill Sports Book Prize 2007). Introduction by Geoffrey Boycott. With contributions from today's leading cricket writers, commentators and legendary players.

'He was the very best of cricket writers.'
Dickie Bird

'Nowadays, I believe there are too many writers attached to cricket who know bugger all about it - Jim was different.' Geoffrey Boycott

Capturing a time when the true spirit of cricket existed. Through Kilburn's writing, some of the game's past legends are brought to life among them Donald Bradman, Fred Trueman, Jack Hobbs, Keith Miller, Garfield Sobers, Hedley Verity, Len Hutton and Walter Hammond.

For more than forty summers, J M Kilburn, the Yorkshire Post's cricket writer, captured the spirit and beauty of the game and the legends gracing it, among them Donald Bradman, Fred Trueman, Jack Hobbs, Keith Miller, Garfield Sobers, Hedley Verity and Walter Hammond. He writes of the days when 8,000 people watched Yorkshire's County Championship matches; when he travelled by ship on an Ashes tour with his friend Len Hutton; and of a bygone but beautiful period when one-day matches, coloured clothing and rampant commercialism in cricket simply didn't exist. Now you can explore these summer days in a richly satisfying collection of Kilburn's work gleaned from the Yorkshire Post, Wisden and The Cricketer. Kilburn is worth reading not only because he was a knowledgeable and respected interpreter of cricket - well balanced, tough-minded and scrupulously honest in his verdicts - but also for the valuable historical and social perspective that reading him provides. Most of all he demonstrably cared about cricket. His heart was in it - and belonged to it.

PUBLICATION JULY 2008

Signed and dedicated bookplate offer - Signed by the editor, Duncan Hamilton, with your name or a person of your choice to appear on the plate at the front of the book