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One Long and Beautiful Summer
- Author
- Duncan Hamilton
- Narrator
- Mark Meadows
- Publisher
- Quercus
- Publish Date
- 2 July 2020
- Run Time
- 6 hours 36 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
What to expect
'Hamilton's book is a marvel . . . I'm not sure he could write a dull sentence if he tried' Spectator
One of Duncan Hamilton's favourite writers on cricket, Edmund Blunden, wrote how he felt going to watch a game: 'You arrive early, earlier even than you meant . . . and you feel a little guilty at the thought of the day you propose to give up to sheer luxury'.
Following Neville Cardus's assertion that 'there can be no summer in this land without cricket', Hamilton plotted the games he would see in 2019 and write down reflectively on some of the cricket that blessed his own sight. It would be captured in the context of the coming season in case subsequent summers and the imminent arrival of The Hundred made that impossible. He would write in the belief that after this season the game might never be quite the same again.
He visits Welbeck Colliery Cricket Club to see Nottinghamshire play Hampshire at the tiny ground of Sookholme, gifted to the club by a local philanthropist who takes money on the gate; his village team at Menston in Yorkshire; the county ground at Hove; watches Ben Stokes's heroics at Headingley, marvels at Jofra Archer's gift of speed in a Second XI fixture for Sussex against Gloucestershire in front of 74 people and three well-behaved dogs; and realises when he reaches the last afternoon of the final county match of the season at Taunton, 'How blessed I am to have been born here. How I never want to live anywhere else. How much I love cricket.'
One Long and Beautiful Summer forms a companion volume to Hamilton's 2009 classic, A Last English Summer. It is sports writing at its most accomplished and evocative, confirming his reputation as the finest contemporary chronicler of the game.
(P)2020 Quercus Editions Limited
Critics Review
-
Duncan Hamilton has written some of the best books about sport in recent years. All lovers of cricket will love this book. You could say that Hamilton has done it again.
The Cricketer
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Brilliantly expresses the passion that millions like him, in pursuit of happiness and belonging, feel for the beautiful game. Simply magnificent
Mail on Sunday
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Hamilton is a worthy biographer
The Times
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A wonderfully languorous piece of time travel back to the so-called Golden Age of cricket
Guardian
See more reviews See fewer reviews
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Hamilton has achieved the difficult task of humanising an icon while clearing the rubbish away from his plinth
The Hindu
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Duncan Hamilton is already a multiple award-winning sports writer, but it is hard to imagine he will write a better book than this superb, elegiac portrait of . . . Cardus
Daily Mail
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Rich in observation
The Cricketer
User Reviews
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Details
- Author
- Duncan Hamilton
- Narrator
- Mark Meadows
- Duration
- 6 hours 36 minutes
- Release Date
- 2 July 2020
- ISBN
- 9781529412734
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Quercus
- Genre
- Cricket, History of sport, Ball sports / ball games
Synopsis
*A MULTIPLE AWARD-WINNING SPORTS WRITER*'Hamilton's book is a marvel . . . I'm not sure he could write a dull sentence if he tried' Spectator One of Duncan Hamilton's favourite writers on cricket, Edmund Blunden, wrote how he felt going to watch a game: 'You arrive early, earlier even than you meant . . . and you feel a little guilty at the thought of the day you propose to give up to sheer luxury'.Following Neville Cardus's assertion that 'there can be no summer in this land without cricket', Hamilton plotted the games he would see in 2019 and write down reflectively on some of the cricket that blessed his own sight. It would be captured in the context of the coming season in case subsequent summers and the imminent arrival of The Hundred made that impossible. He would write in the belief that after this season the game might never be quite the same again.He visits Welbeck Colliery Cricket Club to see Nottinghamshire play Hampshire at the tiny ground of Sookholme, gifted to the club by a local philanthropist who takes money on the gate; his village team at Menston in Yorkshire; the county ground at Hove; watches Ben Stokes's heroics at Headingley, marvels at Jofra Archer's gift of speed in a Second XI fixture for Sussex against Gloucestershire in front of 74 people and three well-behaved dogs; and realises when he reaches the last afternoon of the final county match of the season at Taunton, 'How blessed I am to have been born here. How I never want to live anywhere else. How much I love cricket.'One Long and Beautiful Summer forms a companion volume to Hamilton's 2009 classic, A Last English Summer. It is sports writing at its most accomplished and evocative, confirming his reputation as the finest contemporary chronicler of the game. (P)2020 Quercus Editions Limited
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