'For those who fear the worst for the sport they love, this is like
cool, clear water for a man dying of thirst. It's barnstorming,
coruscating stuff, and as fine a book about the game as you'll read for
years' Mail on Sunday
'Charming . . . a threnody for a vanished and possibly
mythical England' Sebastian Faulks, Sunday Times
'Lyrical . . . [Henderson's] pen is filled with the romantic spirit
of the great Neville Cardus . . . This book is an extended love letter,
a beautifully written one, to a world that he is desperate to keep alive
for others to discover and share. Not just his love of cricket, either,
but of poetry and classical music and fine cinema' The Times
'To those who love both cricket and the context in which it is played,
the book is rather wonderful, and moving' Daily Telegraph
'Philip Larkin's line 'that will be England gone' is the premise of this
fascinating book which is about music, literature, poetry and
architecture as well as cricket. Henderson is that rare bird, a reporter
with a fine grasp of time and place, but also a stylist of enviable
quality and perception' Michael Parkinson
Neville Cardus once said there could be no summer in England without
cricket.
The 2019 season was supposed to be the greatest summer of cricket ever
seen in England. There was a World Cup, followed by five Test matches
against Australia in the latest engagement of sport's oldest rivalry. It
was also the last season of county cricket before the introduction in
2020 of a new tournament, The Hundred, designed to attract an audience
of younger people who have no interest in the summer game.
In That Will Be England Gone, Michael Henderson revisits much-loved
places to see how the game he grew up with has changed since the day in
1965 that he saw the great fast bowler Fred Trueman in his pomp. He
watches schoolboys at Repton, club cricketers at Ramsbottom, and
professionals on the festival grounds of Chesterfield, Cheltenham and
Scarborough. The rolling English road takes him to Leicester for T20, to
Lord's for the most ceremonial Test match, and to Taunton to watch an
old cricketer leave the crease for the last time. He is enchanted at
Trent Bridge, surprised at the Oval, and troubled at Old Trafford.
'Cricket, ' Henderson says, 'has always been part of my other life.'
There are memories of friendships with Ken Dodd, Harold Pinter and Simon
Rattle, and the book is coloured throughout by a love of landscape,
poetry, paintings and music. As well as reflections on his childhood
hero, Farokh Engineer, and other great players, there are digressions on
subjects as various as Lancashire comedians, Viennese melancholy and the
films of Michael Powell.
Lyrical and elegiac, That Will Be England Gone is a deeply personal
tribute to cricket, summer and England.
