Cricket Witness No 1 - Class Peace

26 1. G.M.Trevelyan English Social History; a Survey of Six Centuries (1944). 2. Robert Malcolmson Popular Recreation in English Society 1700-1859 (1973) This is an excellent and well-researched of how English people really did spend their leisure time in the 18 th century. 3. Most readers will be familiar with these valued tillers in the field, to which should be added the name of the diligent Ian Maun From Commons to Lord’s, vol I 1700-1750 (2009) a very thorough collation of 200 cricketing mentions. 4. Felipe Fernandez-Armesto Civilisations (2009) This is the most persuasive analysis of the multi-focal hypothesis. 5. Johann Huizinga Homo Ludens; a Study of the Play Element in Culture (1938) Possibly the most compelling account of the universalism of ‘play’. 6. H.S.Altham A History of Cricket; from the Beginning to the First World War (1926) and Rowland Bowen Cricket; a History of its Growth and Development throughout the World (1970) are two seminal tomes that together lay the foundations for the continuing discourse on cricket’s origins. 7. Peter Wynne-Thomas The History of Cricket; from the Weald to the World (1997) and John Eddowes The Language of Cricket (1997) offer the most reasoned and measured contributions to the ongoing debate about origins. 8. Richard.Cavendish The Death of Frederick, Prince of Wales History Today , March 2001. 9. John Adamson The Noble Revolt; the Overthrow of Charles I (2007) An acclaimed revisionist thesis on the primarily political character of the events leading up to the English Civil Wars of the 1640s. 10. J.H.Plumb Penguin History of England in the 18 th Century (1950) – still regarded as perhaps the most succinct introduction to the study of this century. 11. David Underdown Start of Play (2000) These and later paragraphs owe a debt to this distinguished book, by a country mile the most clinical and yet the most attractive text on cricket in London and the surrounding counties during the 18 th and early 19 th centuries. 12. Thomas Hughes Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1857). 13. Martin Wilson and Martyn and Jeremy Butler ‘Clava FalcataTorsio or Playing Ball with a Curved Bat’ The Cricket Statistician no.148 Winter 2009. 14. Underdown op.cit. For much in these paragraphs on both ‘gentle’ and ‘simple’ individuals, although David Underdown sunnily accents the enjoyment had rather than the money made more than does the more disgruntled current writer. Pre-Victorian Society And Sport