Arlott: The Authorised Biography

by David Rayvern Allen (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  1994

  $3.25

  John Arlott, was the voice of cricket for over 30 years, but he was also a much-loved and multi-faceted man with friends from many walks of life: from Dylan Thomas to Jo Grimond as well as Denis Compton and Ian Botham. He was also a very private man who, though well-known to nearly everyone, was yet unknown to all but a few. The son of a cemetery-keeper, Arlott began life as a clerk in a mental home before becoming a policeman in war-bombed Southampton, a tyro poet encouraged by John Betjeman, 12th man for Worcestershire CC and literary programmes producer at the BBC. He was also a Liberal candidate, author and wine correspondent. This is his biography.

• Used

  Paperback
  2004

  $3.25

  John Arlott's rich Hampshire burr was the voice of BBC cricket commentary for many years, from the great Test match radio broadcasts of the fifties to bucolic Sunday League on the television in the seventies. But he was also a distinguished journalist for the Guardian, a Liberal parliamentary candidate, a courageous opponent of apartheid in sport from the earliest opportunity, and a connoisseur - and imbiber - of fine wine without equal. David Rayvem Allen's definitive biography was acclaimed on its first publication and won the Cricket Society's award for Cricket Book of the Year. Now reissued by Aurum in a new paperback edition to tie in with its publication of the author's authorised biography of E.W. Swanton, Arlott evokes both a broadcasting legend and a sensitive, humane man, whose graphic, pensive and wry commentaries came to epitomise the sound of an English summer.