Cricket Witness No 6 - His Captain's Hand on His Shoulder Smote

72 part in a film and his uncle had had the ‘wild and weird desire’ to return to school. Deploying his acting talents, he had adopted his nephew’s position. One is reminded of the 25 year old Richard Attenborough playing the teenage Jack Read in The Guinea Pig . In Chums there is a back page regular feature called ‘Cricket by Frank Mitchell’, presumably him of St Peter’s School, York, Cambridge University, Yorkshire and England, who did some journalism, including pieces for The Cricketer. This week he offers ‘a Chat about the Oval’, Hylton Cleaver, the periodical’s sports coach has a full page ‘Touchline and Track’ section, answering questions and giving advice. In this week’s article he praises the esprit de corps of Old Boys teams, contemptuous of those who recruit outside players, and dilates on the issues of obstructing the field and what happens if an umpire instinctively takes a catch. Hylton Cleaver wrote several school stories with sporting and, like Michael Poole, ‘mystery’ themes. His chief fictional school was Greyminster - ‘the Ghost of.’; ‘The Secret Service at..’; the –‘Mystery’; ‘The Captain of..’, that last one being the base for a cricketing yarn by Hylton Cleaver, Caught in the Slips. As for The Captain , it only needs to be said that all of PG Wodehouse’s school stories, including the incomparable Mike , were serialised therein before book publication, to demonstrate both the thrust and quality of that weekly periodical. He also contributed short schoolboy stories to the paper, chiefly under the heading of ‘Tales of St Austen’s’. Schoolboy stories still reigned supreme during the 1930s and cricket was alive and well as a major topic. One might have thought that, with such a battery of books and periodicals, the schoolboy literaturemarket would have been saturated. Apparently not, for, with a bright commercial eye and the success of these earlier products, there was, in the Edwardian period, a major intervention. In 1907 the Amalgamated Press at Fleetway House launched The Gem and in 1908, delighted with The Gem’s initial success, founded The Magnet, which proved to be, if anything, a greater publishing coup. The Flood (1) Greyfriars For Ever..And Ever