Lives in Cricket No 21 - Walter Read

123 201 Played by John Cleese, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett. Daily Telegraph 6 November 2010 Last Years I still look down on him” “I know my place. I look up to them both. But while I am poor, I am industrious, honest and trustworthy. Had I the inclination, I could look down on them.” 201 Who was Who 1897-1915 records biographical details of significant people who died between those years. W.G.Grace, some have said the best known Victorian apart from the Queen herself and Gladstone, is there, so is C.W.Alcock, Secretary of the FA and Surrey County Cricket Club for more than three decades. Absent are George Lohmann and Tom Richardson, bowlers and professionals, who between them played in 32 Test Matches, contributing to victories in most of them. Walter Read, batsman and amateur, who played in eighteen, is there. We live in an age when the great-great granddaughter of a coal- miner can be married to the second in line to the throne. That would not have been possible in Read’s day when deference was an accepted part of Victorian society. But limited social mobility was possible and encouraged. Class mattered and Walter William Read was determined to establish, maintain and improve his position in the social structure of his time. Read’s grave at St. John’s Church, Shirley.