A. J. Liebling, born in Manhattan in 1904, joined the staff of the New Yorker in 1935 and contributed innumerable articles to the magazine throughout his lifetime, on subjects ranging from food to boxing and France to horse racing. As a war correspondent during the Second World War, he reported from France, England and Algeria, and participated in the Normandy landings. In later life he married the writer Jean Stafford, his third wife. He died in 1963.

A. J. Liebling

A. J. Rosen is an author of YA fantasy novels and is an ambassador for Wattpad, known as @agatharoza. Entwined is her first novel.

A. J. Rosen

A. K. Davidson

A. O. Scott has been a film critic at the New York Times since 2000. His writing has appeared in many other publications, including the New York Review of Books, Slate, the New Yorker and the Nation. A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism in 2010, Scott is currently Distinguished Professor of Film Criticism at Wesleyan University. He lives with his family in Brooklyn, New York. 
 
@aoscott

A. O. Scott

A.S. Byatt (1936-2023) was a novelist, short-story writer and critic of international renown. Her novels include Possession (winner of the Booker Prize 1990), the Frederica Quartet and The Children’s Book, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. She was appointed CBE in 1990 and DBE in 1999, and was awarded the Erasmus Prize 2016 for her ‘inspiring contribution to life writing’ and the Pak Kyongni Prize 2017. In 2018 she received the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award.

A. S. Byatt

A. T. Williams won the George Orwell Prize for Political Writing in 2013 for his book A Very British Killing: The Death of Baha Mousa. He lives in Warwickshire.

A. T. Williams

Dubbed ‘The new queen of spy fiction’ by the Guardian newspaper, and ‘the real thing’ by the Washington Post, A.C. 'Ava' Glass is the CWA Dagger-shortlisted author of Alias Emma (The Chase), The Traitor and The Trap. The Traitor was a 2023 Richard and Judy Bookclub pick. Alias Emma was a Barnes and Noble book of the month. A former crime reporter and communications consultant, for five years Ava worked closely with spies. Her time in that world fascinated her, and the people she met back then inspire every book she writes.

A.C. Glass

A.E. Housman

Arthur Edward Waite was the designer and co-creator of the now famous Rider Waite Tarot deck. 
 
An American-born British poet and scholarly mystic, his strong interest in all esoteric matters - divination, magic, Kabbalism, alchemy and Freemasony - led to him penning a number of books. These include the Key to the Tarot, The Book of Ceremonial Magic and A New Encyclopedia of Freemasony.

A.E. Waite

A.G.D. Maran

A.J. Ayer

A.J. Cronin

A K Benedict writes crime and speculative fiction in a room filled with clowns, mannequins and Doctor Who figures. Her first novel, The Beauty of Murder, was nominated for an eDunnit award and is in development for a major 8-part TV series by Company Pictures. Her second, Jonathan Dark or The Evidence of Ghosts, came out in February 2016. She's written Torchwood audio dramas for Big Finish and her short stories have featured in anthologies including Great British Horror and Best British Short Stories. She lives in St Leonards-on-Sea with her dog, Dame Margaret Rutherford.

A.K.Benedict

A. L. Kennedy has twice been selected as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists and has won a host of other awards – including the Costa Book of the Year for her novel Day. She lives in Essex.

A.L. Kennedy

A.M. Ellis is a speculative fiction author and lover of everything steeped in myth and mystery. Her stories often lean into diverse voices, not only in her identity as a Black woman, but in exploring neurodivergence and mental health. A proud introvert and nostalgic gamer, she lives in Maryland, USA, with her husband and three children.

A.M. Ellis

A.N. Wilson was born in 1950 and educated at Rugby and New College, Oxford. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he holds a prominent position in the world of literature and journalism. He is an award-winning biographer and a celebrated novelist, winning prizes for much of his work. He lives in North London.

A.N. Wilson

A. T. Emerald lives with her husband and baby daughter in Nottinghamshire. She discovered her love of writing in 2020 and has not shut up about enemies to lovers ever since. She loves iced matcha, torrid love confessions with knives pressed to throats (fictional, of course) and does not accept bills for any therapy her books might incur.

A.T. Emerald

A.W. Priest

A.B.C. Merriman-Labor was a barrister, writer and munitions worker born in Freetown, Sierra Leone in 1877. His published works include A Series of Lectures on the Negro Race and The Story of the African Slave in a Nutshell. He also edited two editions of the Handbook of Sierra Leone. He arrived in the UK in 1904 to study law. In 1907, he organised a centenary commemoration of the abolition of the slave trade in Westminster Abbey. He later embarked on an 'entertainment-lecture' tour called Life and Scenes in Britain, travelling across thousands of miles of West, South West and Central Africa, which he expanded on to create Britons Through Negro Spectacles.

ABC Merriman-Labor

AJ Cronin

AJ Molloy

Aabria Iyengar is an American actress and author.

Aabria Iyengar

Aaliya Jaleel is a freelance illustrator, designer, and visual development artist, currently majoring in Animation at the University of Texas at Dallas. She is also the illustrator of Under My Hijab and Muslim Girls Rise. You can visit her online at www.aaliyamj.com.

Aaliya Jaleel

Aaron Allston

After more than fifteen years of experience as a clinical psychotherapist, Dr Aaron Balick has taken the amazing insights from psychology and psychotherapy out of the consultation room and made them accessible to the wider world. 
 
He has been an ‘agony uncle’ for many years for both CBBC and BBC Radio 1, as well as on television, including BBC Worldwide, BBC 3 and BBC Learning.

Aaron Balick

Aaron Carroll

Aaron Dignan is the founder of The Ready--a global organizational transformation and coaching practice--that helps companies large and small adopt new forms of self-organization and dynamic teaming. Clients include Johnson &amp; Johnson, Microsoft, Lloyds Bank, Citibank, Boeing, Mailchimp, Airbnb, Dropbox, and charity: water. 
 
He is also the founder of Murmur--a SaaS startup that helps teams scale culture through the magic of working agreements. The Murmur platform will allow every team on the planet to define and share their ways of working. 
 
Dignan is the author of Brave New Work (2019) and Game Frame (2011), co-host of the Brave New Work podcast, and a friend to misfit toys.

Aaron Dignan

Aaron Edwards is a senior lecturer in defence and international affairs at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, specialising in terrorism and counter-insurgency. He is the author and editor of several books, including Defending the Realm: The Politics of Britain’s Small Wars Since 1945, and has lectured all over the world on aspects of national and international security. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Aaron Edwards

Aaron Robertson is a writer, an editor, and a translator of Italian literature. His translation of Igiaba Scego’s Beyond Babylon was short-listed for the 2020 PEN Translation Prize and the National Translation Award, and in 2021 he received a National Endowment for the Arts grant. His work has appeared in the New York Times, The Nation, Foreign Policy, n+1, The Point, and Literary Hub, among other publications. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Aaron Robertson

Aaron Shapiro

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Les Scott

Never before has the whole world of cricket been collected in one, really quite large volume. 
 
Les Scott has collected a lifetime of anecdotes, records, quotes and cuttings to make The Essential Cricket Book. With a century of sections detailing everything from balls and slips to pavilions, umpires and teas; all the Test-playing nations, first-class counties as well as minor counties and clubs, plus universities; tournaments from the Ashes through the old John Player League to the Sheffield Shield (not to mention the KFC Twenty20 Big Bash); bizarre dismissals and of course LBWs, all the great games and characters of cricket are brought to life. 
 
It's all here: the first player to wear a helmet, the first man to attempt a reverse sweep, the games when camels (or mackerels) stopped play, the batsmen given out 'absent, thought lost on the Tube' and 'retired, suffering from measles', or simply the last England bowler to take a wicket with the first ball of a Test Match.

Bats, Balls & Bails

The Essential Cricket Book

Soumya Bhattacharya

The great C L R James once asked: 'What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?' For some of us answering that can keep you awake at night. 
 
Soumya Bhattacharya knows this: he has a steady job, a loving wife, a daughter he dotes on. But most of all he has cricket. Or perhaps more accurately: cricket has him. Ever since he can remember, he's loved the game. From his first knockabouts on the living-room carpet - with his mother's paper bats and balls - he progressed to Test Match Special on short-wave, then to the whole panoply of obsession: one-dayers, Test matches, TV highlights, re-runs of TV highlights, always following one team - India. When you come from a country where the game is more than a religion, you must like cricket, right? 
 
In this sparkling memoir of a lifetime spent in the company of eleven men, a green field and a billion other worshippers, Soumya Bhattacharya gives us a guided tour of the soul of a cricket obsessive. Part reportage, part travelogue, part cultural politics, You Must Like Cricket? takes us from his home in Kolkata to Lord's and back again as Bhattacharya explores the joys and the lows (mostly the lows) of a thirty-year love affair, how one game has become so closely tied to a nation's identity, and the troubling hold cricket has over him. But if your home ground was called Eden Gardens, where else would you rather be?

You Must Like Cricket?

Memoirs of an Indian Cricket Fan

P.G. Wodehouse

'The funniest writer ever to put words to paper' HUGH LAURIE 
_____________________________________________ 
 
From his early days Wodehouse adored cricket and references to the game run like a golden thread though his writings. He not only wrote about this glorious British pastime, but also played it well, appearing six times at Lords, where his first captain was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. 
 
Illustrated with wonderful drawings and contemporary score-sheets, Wodehouse at the Wicket is the first ever compendium of Wodehouse's writings on cricket. Edited by cricket historian Murray Hedgcock, this delightful book also contains fascinating facts about Wodehouse's cricketing career and how it is reflected in his work. 
 
The perfect gift for Wodehouse readers and fans of all things cricket. 
 
_____________________________________ 
 
 
'You don't analyse such sunlit perfection, you just bask in its warmth and splendour' STEPHEN FRY 
 
'Immersed in a P.G. Wodehouse book, it's possible to keep the real world at bay and live in a far, far nicer, funnier one where happy endings are the order of the day' MARIAN KEYES 
 
'The greatest comic writer ever' DOUGLAS ADAMS 
 
'P.G. Wodehouse should be prescribed to treat depression. Cheaper, more effective than valium and far, far more addictive' OLIVIA WILLIAMS

Wodehouse At The Wicket

A Cricketing Anthology

Barry Johnston

John Cleese, Christopher Lee and Michael Parkinson share their passion for cricket with the great broadcaster, Brian Johnston. During the lunch interval on the Saturday of every Test in England, BBC Radio’s ‘Test Match Special’ used to invite a well-known guest into the commentary box for a chat with Brian Johnston about themselves and their passion for cricket. Some turned out to be able cricketers, but they all had stories to tell about matches they had seen and cricketers they had met. Barry Johnston - Brian Johnston’s son - has selected five chats from the series ‘A View from the Boundary’, beginning in 1980 with the playwright Ben Travers, and his vivid recollections of W.G. Grace and other characters from the golden age of cricket. He is followed by Michael Charlton, the political broadcaster and former cricket commentator, who covered the great Australia v West Indies tied Test in 1960, and John Cleese, a lifelong Somerset supporter, who tells some funny stories about ‘Monty Python’ and ‘Fawlty Towers’. Hollywood film star Sir Christopher Lee recalls watching the legendary Jack Hobbs and Don Bradman, and Sir Michael Parkinson talks about opening the batting at Barnsley with Dickie Bird and how he nearly played for Hampshire. Publisher’s note: This recording was taken from part of the cassette release of ‘A View from the Boundary’. 
 
1 CD. 1 hr 15 mins approx.

Johnners' A View From The Boundary Test Match Special

Tim Albone

Cool Runnings meets Joseph O'Neill's Netherland in an inspiring and feel-good story of bravery and sporting success from a country so widely known for war and extremism. This is the true story of the Afghanistan cricket team and their extraordinary attempt to join the world's elite cricketing nations. That this devastated nation should be able to field a cricket team at all, let alone one as successful as this, is an unbelievable achievement. Seven years ago, in a country which does not have a real cricket pitch even today, there was no national team. But a group of young Afghan men, exiled by war, learnt to play in the smashed concrete of refugee camps, and have risen from obscurity to the groomed grass pitches of international cricket. 
 
With unlimited access, Tim Albone travelled alongside the team for the two years, charting the players' progress from refugees in Pakistan to the brink of international sporting stardom. Far from being bogged down in cricket jargon, this tale of a gang of dedicated, charismatic, occasionally exasperating young men seeking triumph out of disaster is one that will move and inspire everyone. 
 
Foreword by Mike Atherton.

Out of the Ashes

The Remarkable Rise and Rise of the Afghanistan cricket team

Shane Warne

With a flamboyant approach to the game on and off the pitch, Australia's greatest bowler Shane Warne is an irresistible cricketing force. In Shane Warne's Century, he candidly profiles 100 players from every Test nation who have had the most significant impact on his cricketing life. 
 
Warne is famous for having never scoring a Test century, although he came tantalisingly close on several occasions. He now wants to set the record straight by writing about a century of cricketing stars he has encountered during his illustrious career, The famous names featured here include fellow Australian legends Allan Border, Steve Waugh, Ricky Ponting and Glenn McGrath, as well as adversaries such as Brian Lara, Sachin Tendulkar, Jonty Rhodes and Freddie Flintoff. Warne also puts together a dream Test match of those he would have loved to have played alongside versus a team of international legends. Pulling no punches and giving a fascinating insight into the game, Warne serves up highly readable anecdotes and opinions. 
 
Throughout the book, Warne covers the serious issues affecting cricket today, such as cheating and match-fixing, and assesses a large number of professional relationships he has enjoyed and endured, including those with Sri Lankan star Arjuna Ranatunga and South African captain Graeme Smith. 
 
Shane Warne's Century is a genuine page-turner by one of cricket's most popular stars and is a must-read for all cricket fans.

Shane Warne's Century

My Top 100 Test Cricketers

Mark Ramprakash

Mark Ramprakash is arguably the greatest English batsman of his generation, but he is also an enigma. He is among an elite group of players who have scored 100 first-class centuries, yet has never flourished as he should have done at Test level. To many people in the UK, he is just as well known for his exploits on the dance floor: he won Strictly Come Dancing in 2006 and went on to win the Champion of Champions final in 2008 for Sport Relief. 
 
In Strictly Me, Ramprakash covers in detail all aspects of his cricket career - from the hot-headed cricketing prodigy who made his Test debut for England at the age of 21 to finally being cast aside by his country in 2002. He discusses how he has become one of the UK's best celebrity dancers and how his newfound status as a media celebrity has flourished since then.

Strictly Me

My Life Under the Spotlight

David Fulton

No one feels the heat of an Ashes battle more than the captains of England and Australia. The weight of national expectation, and more than 120 years of history, is on their shoulders from the moment they walk out to toss a coin and start a Test match that is like no other. 
 
The Captains' Tales offers a unique insight into the minds of a generation of captains from two great nations, who share with the reader what it feels like to call the shots in Test cricket's greatest cauldron. From Mike Brearley's cajoling of Ian Botham during the famous summer of 1981 to Ricky Ponting's revenge mission of 2006-07, each Ashes captain from the last quarter-century reveals what made him tick, his vision of where he wanted to take his team and how he handled key characters within the dressing-room. The author, former Kent captain David Fulton, delves behind the scenes for clues about how these sporting generals constructed their battle plans and uses his own experience to determine their strengths and weaknesses as leaders of men. 
 
 The Captains' Tales will strike a chord not just with cricket lovers but with sporting captains of all abilities and readers who seek a greater insight into the broader issues of management and leadership.

The Captains' Tales

Battle for the Ashes

Ian Botham

Sir Ian Botham and the Ashes are as closely intertwined as willow and leather or Merv Hughes and his moustache. You simply cannot think of one without the other. In this book, Sir Ian takes you on a ride through a lifetime's relationship with cricket's oldest and most treasured prize, revealing just how it has shaped his life and how he has helped to turn it into the contest it is today. 
 
From the moment he first watched the likes of Ken Barrington stride to the wicket in jaw-jutting defiance to the day he flayed Australia's bowling attack around Headingley as if playing with his mates in the park, and then onwards to his role in commentating on what was arguably the finest series of the lot, in 2005, Sir Ian has a rich and varied connection with the Ashes, and he tells all here. 
 
The Ashes is a series that has provided incredible highs and heartbreaking lows for English and Australian fans alike over the past 35 years. Sir Ian has often been at the centre of the roller-coaster ride. Whether it is his account of his days as England's dogsbody in 1977 in Melbourne or the story of his refusal to let Bob Willis bowl downwind until he was angry enough to skittle the Aussies in 1981, all is revealed in depth in Botham's Book of the Ashes.

Botham's Book of the Ashes

A Lifetime Love Affair with Cricket's Greatest Rivalry

In My Sporting Heroes, one of the country's great sportsmen, Sir Ian Botham, draws up his template of what he believes makes a true sporting hero. 
 
Botham singles out the ten qualities he believes are the basic elements in any true sportsperson - bravery, passion, composure, determination, skill, leadership, instinct, dedication, humour and compassion - then highlights the sportsmen and women who he believes best demonstrate each quality, backing up his selection with personal anecdotes of his time spent with them or watching them in action. 
 
Covering a wide variety of sports and discussing admired athletes of both the past and present, from Ian Woosnam, Paul Gascoigne and Jonathan Davies to Joe Calzaghe, Lewis Hamilton and Andy Murray, My Sporting Heroes is a lively celebration of exactly what makes a true sporting legend - from someone who knows a thing or two about it!

My Sporting Heroes

His 50 Greatest from Britain and Ireland

Brian Johnston

Brian Johnston, aka ‘Johnners’, the BBC’s long-time cricket commentator, is the umpire in this test of wit and general knowledge, as two teams try to score the highest number of runs under his watchful eye.   In these four episodes, team captains Tim Rice and Willie Rushton are joined by Stephen Fry, Paul Merton, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Barry Cryer, Bill Tidy, Caroline Quentin, Bernard Cribbins and Robin Bailey.   But which questions will they go for? The easier ‘single’ worth just one run? Or will they try the harder question and attempt a ‘boundary’ (four runs)?   Can the batting team reach six questions (an ‘over’) before the other team gets a go? And there’s every chance that calls of ‘Howzat!’ or ‘Bouncer!’ can interrupt play...   With questions that include trivia and unusual facts, hear the stumps fly and the wickets fall in these four wonderful episodes.

Johnners' Trivia Test Match

D J Taylor

In January 1929, before 20,000 spectators, Norwich City of the Third Division South went down 0-5 in the third round of the FA Cup to an amateur side composed of ex-public school boys who disdained professional tactics in favour of instinct and teamwork. Within a decade, the Corinthians, the club that for forty years had supplied the entire English national side, had all but ceased to exist. The world was changing. By the time of the last 'Gentleman vs. Players' cricket match in 1962 a whole era in English sport had come to an end. 
 
But the passing of amateur sportsmen - footballers, cricketers, golfers, tennis players - had implications beyond the playing field. A century ago 'amateur' was a compliment to someone who played a game simply for love of it. A hundred years later it is a byword for cack-handed incompetence. In this brilliant study of the patterns of sporting and cultural life, D J Taylor examines the process that led to professionalism's triumph and the long rearguard action fought by sportsmen - and literature - on amateurism's behalf. 
 
On the Corinthian Spirit has many heroes - from 'Charlie Bam', the legendary Corinthian defender, who once played a game with a broken leg, to the boys' school story hero Strickland of the Sixth, Old Etonian cricket-lover George Orwell and the 14th Norwich Cub Scout XI of the early 1970s. Drawing on his own experiences of 'amateurism', D J Taylor describes a changing moral universe with profound consequences both for sport and the world beyond it.

On The Corinthian Spirit

The Decline of Amateurism in Sport

Bill Frindall

What is the highest number of runs a player has scored in Test matches without ever being dismissed? 
 
Did P. G. Wodehouse name Bertie Wooster's valet, Jeeves, after a county cricketer? 
 
Why is Ashley Giles known as the 'King of Spain'? 
 
Who scored the 1,000th century in Test cricket? 
 
No one knew and loved, cricket quite like Bill Frindall - his passion and his encyclopaedic knowledge of the game was evident as soon as he took over scoring for Test Match Special in 1966, a post he held until his death in 2009. In 2001, he began offering his cricket expertise through a column on the Test Match Special website, 'Ask Bearders'. Fans would write in with the most difficult and arcane questions possible, hoping to 'Stump the Bearded Wonder'. They never did. 
 
Ask Bearders collects the best of the Q &amp; As from Bill's popular column, offering cricket fans a one-stop compendium of the most challenging bits of history and statistics the game has to offer. It is a unique testament to the perfection Bill sought in his study of the game, and an essential book for any serious cricket fan

Ask Bearders

Sandy Balfour

What I Love About Cricket is the story of a summer when a 'master' cricket obsessive teaches his novice 'pupil' the wisdom of the game. Sandy Balfour is cast as the supposed master and his sixteen-year-old daughter's new boyfriend - the skateboarding boy wonder - is the reluctant pupil. 
 
This beginner's guide to the infuriatingly perverse game of cricket is a love letter addressed both to 
those who utterly fail to understand it and to those who need reminding why they fell in love in 
the first place. What unfolds is wonderfully observed, very funny and as much about fathers 
and daughters, love and life, as it is about cricket.

What I Love About Cricket

One Man's Vain Attempt to Explain Cricket to a Teenager who Couldn't Give a Toss

Simon Hughes

Cricket defines Englishness like no other national pastime. From its earliest origins in the sixteenth century (or an early version played by shepherds called creag in the 1300s), through the formation of the MCC and the opening of Lord's cricket ground in 1787, to the spread of county cricket in the next century, when the Wisden Cricketers' Almanack was first published and the Ashes series was born, this simple sport of bat and ball has captured the imagination of the masses. 
 
Throughout its 500-year history, cricket has been a mirror for society as a whole, reflecting the changes that have brought us from the quintessential village green to Freddie Flintoff's pedalo, from W G Grace to Monty Panesar, via a fair number of eccentrics, heroes and downright villains. 
 
William Hill Award-winning writer Simon Hughes, no mean player himself, has lived and breathed cricket his whole life and now takes his analytical skills and typically irreverent eye to charting the history of English cricket. But this is no dry, dusty tome. It is the story of the mad characters who inhabit the game, the extraordinary lengths people will go to to watch and play it, the tale of a national obsession. It debunks the myth of cricket sportsmanship, showing the origins of sledging and match-fixing in centuries of subterfuge, corruption and violence. And it takes us beyond sport, to the heart of what it really means to be English.

And God Created Cricket

Lawrence Booth

Cricket, Lovely Cricket is a journey around the perennially curious world of cricket, leaving no metaphorical leg-break unturned and peering at the game from every conceivable angle. Here, Lawrence Booth, who had little option but to turn a youthful obsession with the game into a means of paying the mortgage, seeks to consider the questions that crop up on a daily basis but rarely receive a satisfactory answer. What are the players really like? What is the secret of sledging? Why get so worked up about the Ashes? Why all the clichés? And how did India take over the world? 
 
Taking the reader to the heart of a game that seems more capable than any other of bewitching its followers, this is a captivating look at the way cricket has become what it is today - and what, given a fair wind, it might be like in the future.

Cricket, Lovely Cricket?

An Addict's Guide to the World's Most Exasperating Game

Geoffrey Boycott

Who'd make it into the best England team ever? And you can chose anyone, regardless of when they might have played. Would W.G. Grace be playing alongside Denis Compton and David Gower? Or Kevin Pietersen? 
 
The debate could be endless, so who better to make the selection than Geoffrey Boycott, himself one of England's all-time highest scoring Test batsmen and now the game's most forthright, shrewd and iconoclastic commentator. 
 
Based on his own fresh analysis amd interpretation of the statistics, Boycs has come up with his own, sometimes surprising Best Eleven of all time. And he's not just cast a critical eye over England's finest either. Every other test-playing nation comes under the spotlight. 
 
You may not agree - in fact, you're almost certain not to - but each player has been carefully chosen and the case for his inclusion forcefully argued in what is sure to be the most entertaining, thought-provoking and memorable cricket books of the year from one of the game's most outspoken and enduring characters.

The Best XI

Glenn McGrath

From working the land in Narromine to winning cricket's World Cup three times, Glenn McGrath has always faced life with fierce determination and an unerring will to succeed, despite the odds. Now, following his retirement from international cricket, McGrath tells his complete story - on and off the field. 
 
The man known as 'Pigeon' won his baggy green cap in Perth in 1993 and went on to forge a brilliant career, eventually becoming cricket's most successful fast bowler with 563 Test wickets. McGrath entered Ashes folklore in 1997 when he destroyed England by taking 8 for 38 at Lords, and he even scored a Test half-century with the bat. With leg spinner Shane Warne, he formed the most devastating bowling combination in Test history. 
 
Glenn McGrath's most meaningful achievements, however, have been off the field. With his wife, Jane, he established the McGrath Foundation, a major funder for and supporter of breast cancer sufferers. Here, in their own words, the McGraths discuss their battles with the disease and Jane's tragic death. 
 
Line and Strength is the tell-all story of an Australian country boy who took on the world.

Line and Strength

The Complete Story by Glenn McGrath and Daniel Lane

Brian Johnston, known to everyone as Johnners, was as well known for his on-air gaffes as for his Test Match Special commentaries. Here are his most famous and funniest cricketing mishaps, which have been chosen by his son, Barry. Among Johnners’ laugh-out-loud clangers are ‘joined by the Balls’, ‘sitting on a shooting stick’ and a streaker’s ‘cheeky performance... waving her flag and other things’. There’s also Mr Titt’s letter... More giggles from the archives include Johnners’ notorious Ashes comedy song, his appearances on Quote, Unquote and Trivia Test Match, plus Fawlty Towers insights from John Cleese. From leg-pulling to leg-overs, inflatable parrots to chocolate cake, this special recording is not just for cricket lovers, it’s for anyone who loves a laugh!

Johnners Cricketing Gaffes, Giggles And Cakes

Voted the greatest English cricketer of the 20th century by the fans, Sir Ian Botham is the English game's one true living legend and his story both on and off the pitch reads like a Boy's Own rollercoaster ride. 
 
Born with a natural genius for cricket, Botham began breaking records with bat and ball from a young age and soon became the man English cricket expected most from. After a troubled period as England's captain, Botham rose once again to become a national hero with his display in the Miracle Ashes of 1981. But, with his confrontational nature and wild streak, he began regularly making the wrong kind of headlines. With accusations of drink and drugs, affairs and ball-tampering, he became hounded by the tabloid pack, never sure whether they wanted him to triumph or implode. Now a Knight and just as famous for his tireless charity work, Beefy gives us the definitive story of his never-dull life and times in his own no-nonsense words.

Head On - Ian Botham: The Autobiography

Michael Simkins

A fat boy with a passion for sweets and a loathing for games, the young Michael Simkins finds in cricket a sport where size doesn't necessarily matter and a full-blown obsession is born. Now in middle-age, he still harbours the somewhat deluded belief that the England middle-order might usefully benefit from his hard-earned skills. From impromptu Test series played with his dad in the family sweetshop through to his years running a team of dysfunctional inadequates, Fatty Batter is the bestselling and hilarious story of one man's life lived through cricket.

Fatty Batter

How cricket saved my life (then ruined it)

What's the difference between short leg and deep midwicket? When would you be thinking about bowling a yorker? What's so great about the sound of leather on willow? Cricket&rsquo;s vocabulary is a mixture of jargon and clich&eacute;, poetry and prose, misty-eyed romanticism and old-gits&rsquo; cynicism. Arm-ball to Zooter is a witty guide to the peculiarities of the game, its history and major figures; cricket-lovers might find their own pet hates confirmed; cricket newcomers might be amazed at what cricket-lovers have been up to all these years.

Arm-ball to Zooter

A Sideways Look at the Language of Cricket

Kevin Pietersen

Described by the media as 'the David Beckham of cricket', Kevin has become the poster boy for English cricket. But he is also in possession of a prodigious talent - fearless, bold and with unflappable nerves. His unique batting style has produced hundreds of runs and many outstanding innings, culminating in his extraordinary triumph at the 2005 Ashes. Yet with the highs, come the lows, and he gives his version of events during the 2006/07 Ashes when England were defeated by Australia. 
 
Crossing the Boundary recounts Kevin's remarkable journey so far - from growing up in his native South Africa and the opposition he faced from the national cricket board; his move to England and burgeoning career at Hampshire to winning a place on the England team. It provides a rare insight into the mind of an international cricketer, on and off the pitch. Reflecting his youthful charisma and his bullish confidence, this is a sporting memoir like no other. 
 
Full of personal anecdotes and insight from numerous sporting legends such as Shane Warne, Ian Botham, and Nasser Hussain, this is the riveting story of one of the most significant cricketers of our time.

Crossing the Boundary

Nasser Hussain

Nasser Hussain was acclaimed as England's best cricket captain since Mike Brearley. Under his leadership, a side more famous for its batting collapses and ability to seize defeat from the jaws of victory discovered its backbone. With coach Duncan Fletcher he put some steel into the side; they became a difficult team to beat. 
 
Hussain wore his heart on his sleeve: railing against complacency, defying critics of his place in the batting line-up and making a principled stand at the last World Cup when the ECB seemed incapable of it. 
 
Expect passion, integrity, insight and candour in his eagerly awaited autobiography.

Playing With Fire

Don Oslear

WISDEN'S THE LAWS OF CRICKET sets out in full the text of the new laws of cricket, 42 in number (with permission of the MCC which own the copyright in them). For each law it provides a commentary covering the reasons for any changs, explaining the background, and highlighting how they are likely to affect the way the game is played at every level. Full discussion is devoted to the major contentious issues, such as the introduction of penalty runs for various misdemeanours, and the revisions to the 'no ball' law. Don Oslear, the distinguished umpire, has been intimately involved over several years in the process of drafting the new laws, and explains why they needed changing, what views his committe recieved from the governing bodies of all the cricketing nations and from players, spectators and the media, how these were resolved, and what effect they are expected to have on the future of the game. No one who plays cricket, or is seriously interested in the game, can afford to miss this book.

Wisden's The Laws Of Cricket

Seasons

Riding the Torpedo

A Private Thriller

A series of children's modern classic novels by renowned 20th century children's writers. All the titles in this series have the A Puffin Book logo, contemporary-style covers, and child-friendly endnotes.

A Puffin Book

A Ripley Novel

A Slice of the Moon

A Victorian Mystery

A Walk in...

A Women’s Murder Club Thriller

A chef Paul Delamare Mystery

Aberrations

Across the Universe

Actiphons

Adelia Aguilar

Adrian Mole

Adventures in Time

Aftermath

Against War

Age of X

Agent 21

Agent Z

Detective Aidan Waits is a troubled junior detective haunted by his past. Facing an uncertain future, and disconnected from his history, DC Waits and his partner, Detective Inspector Peter 'Sutty' Sutcliffe work on Manchester's streets to uncover the city's worst criminals among the grime of the underworld.

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