The pathway to fame was defined at an early age. The schoolboy prodigy became the lynchpin of English cricket. His lasting memorial was his resolution and powers of concentration. He was Churchillian in stature in moments of crisis and no cause was lost while he was at the crease. As a boy at Dulwich he captained the Public Schools. As an undergraduate at Cambridge he took five South African wickets for 70 in his third match and scored a century against Yorkshire in his fourth. By 1949, at the age of 25, he was playing for England against New Zealand. When his Test career ended ten years later he had become only the second Englishman to score 2,000 runs and take 100 wickets in Test cricket.

Book jacket.