Lives in Cricket No 26 - HV Hesketh-Prichard

97 country until midwinter or even as late as March . This year Parliament resumed after Easter on 18 April. May signified the ‘official’ start of the season with an annual exhibition at the Royal Academy. Thus began a whirlwind of court balls and concerts, private balls and dances, parties and sporting events. The Derby, an event for the masses as well as the aristocracy, was usually held in May or June: Parliament adjourned for this race. Ascot was more exclusive, and attended by the upper classes. The season peaked in the June fortnight between Derby and Ascot. July hosted the Henley Regatta and cricket contests, with particular attention given to Oxford v Cambridge, and Eton v Harrow. Parliament always adjourned by August 12, the opening of the grouse season. ‘Everyone’ went north and the fashionable deserted London come August. It seems likely that Hex and Lily stayed in London until the coronation. George V was crowned on 22 June, and Hex went back to Ireland after that when the King visited Dublin in July. The August edition of Pearson’s included a cricket story by Hex, The Making of Jim Dunn. He would have wanted to get away, and in August too they went shooting with the Gathorne-Hardys in North Uist. Hex was shooting seals, but was appalled by the clubbing of grey seals which took place every November. It was to be July 1913 before an important article by Hex appeared in the Cornhill Magazine which was to lead to a Parliamentary Bill which actually became law in the spring of 1914. 52 Hex also went shooting at Cortachy on Arran, at Pitcaple in Aberdeenshire, at Tewin Water and Luton Hoo in Hertfordshire, and of course back at Gorhambury. In the autumn of 1911 Hex apparently considered joining the officers’ reserve and the Black Watch was prepared to take him though he was well over the usual age – but he decided he didn’t have time. In December 1911 the Manchester Guardian carried a notice to say that in January Chambers’ magazine was about to start serialisation of The Cahusac Mystery by K. and Hesketh Prichard . ‘The opening chapters,’ it said, told ‘of a romance of powerful interest.’ The same advertisement appeared in the Irish Times and no doubt elsewhere. So – although there was little or no cricket – it had been a busy year. 52 This was the Grey Seals Protection Act 1914, the first time a wild mammal had been protected in law. Married Man