Cricket Witness No 1 - Class Peace

Front cover: Three ‘Pukka’ schoolboys in blazers and caps. Back cover: A group of little boys from Newport, South Wales. NOTES The image for the front cover is taken from a postcard from the Hertfordshire area during the late nineteenth century on which was simply written the word ‘Pukka’, giving a patent clue to the social background of these three privileged young men in their resplendent caps and blazers. ‘Pukka’, borrowed from the Hindi and Urdu ‘pakka’ or solid, came to mean ‘genuine’ at the height of the British Raj, a complementary term for a fine gentleman. On the back cover, and somewhat different in class, is a photograph, taken around the same time of an engaging mix of young cricketers from Newport in Monmouthshire – a far more industrial, and less privileged, location than that of their counterparts from the leafy north London suburbs.