The game of the season (oxford paperbacks)

Once again, as in his earlier book The Cricket Match, Hugh de Selincourt writes about the serious and engrossing activity of village cricket. Few readers of that classic will be able to resist the temptation to follow the further adventures of the Tillingfold team and their shrewd and amiable captain, Gauvinier. In the Game of The Season (a collection of short stories) de Selincourt describes with delightful humour several exciting matches including one against the Australian touring party and another against ‘the General’s eleven’. The book can be enjoyed in its own right by those who have never read its predecessor, and even by those whose passion for the game is less than wholehearted. Hugh de Selincourt (1878 – 1951) was an English author and journalist, chiefly remembered today for his timeless tale of village cricket, The Cricket Match (1924). He studied at Dulwich College before going on to University College, Oxford. During the 1910s, he worked as a journalist, initially as drama critic of the Star and later as literary critic of the Observer. He continued to write book reviews for the Observer long after quitting his official post in 1914. He had also published a few light-hearted novels but after World War I broke out his literary output took on a more serious note. As war ended in 1918, his writings resumed their former gaiety, in novels such as Young Mischief and Young ‘Un. The Cricket Match stands as one of the classic accounts of village cricket in English literature. The fictional village of Tillingfold was a recurring element in de Selincourt’s work, and was based on his own village of Storrington at the foot of the South Downs.