Lives in Cricket No 42 - Frank and George Mann

ABOUT THE AUTHOR As a schoolboy, Brian Rendell enjoyed his first Test match in 1946 sitting behind the boundary ropes in front of the Grand Stand at Lord‘s; watched Middlesex during the “golden summer” of 1947; marvelled at Bradman’s ‘Invincibles’ in 1948; and saw George Mann leading England against New Zealand at Lord’s in 1949. He has continued to be a lover of cricket at all levels for nearly 70 years. Following his retirement, after thirty years in newspaper and magazine publishing plus ten years in education, he set out to further his research into cricket history, in particular the Bodyline controversy, and obtained exclusive access to the private letters written by Gubby Allen during the MCC tours of Australia in 1932/33 and 1936/37. He is the author of Gubby Allen: Bad Boy of Bodyline , published by Cricket Lore in 2004 and Gubby Under Pressure published by the ACS in 2007. He followed these with two contributions to this Lives in Cricket series, Fuller Pilch: A Straightforward Man and Walter Robins: Achievements, Affections and Affronts. He is a member of the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians, the Cricket Society, the Friends of Shakespeare’s Globe, and the Christopher Marlowe Society. His other interests include English and Spanish football, the Shakespeare authorship debate, and the Rolling Stones. Married with one daughter and a two-year-old grandson, he and his wife Marilyn celebrated their golden wedding anniversary in 2010.