Acclaimed as a magisterial, classic work, A Social History of English Cricket is an encyclopaedic survey of the game, from its humble origins all the way to modern floodlit finishes. But it is also the story of English culture, mirrored in a sport that has always been a complex repository of our manners, hierarchies and politics. Derek Birley’s survey of the impact on cricket of two world wars, Empire and ‘the English caste system’, will, contends Ian Wooldridge, ‘teach an intelligent child of twelve more about their heritage than he or she will ever pick up at school.’ In just under 400 pages Birley takes us through a rich historical tapestry: how the game was snatched from rustic obscurity by gentlemanly gamblers; became the height of late eighteenth century metropolitan fashion; was turned into both symbol and synonym for British imperialism; and its more recent struggle to dislodge the discomforting social values preserved in the game from its imperial heyday. Superbly witty and humorous, peopled by larger-than-life characters from Denis Compton to Ian Botham, and wholly forswearing nostalgia, A Social History of English Cricket is a tour-de-force by one of the great writers on cricket.

'The Sweetest Rose' traces the history of Yorkshire County Cricket Club over its 150 years, from its birth in Sheffield in January, 1863, right up to the present day.

The Rev Edmund Carter introduced the great Lord Hawke to Yorkshire cricket. Although he played only a handful of first-class matches for Yorkshire, he played the game for Oxford University in the 1860s, in Victoria as a young man, and in West London, before the bulk of his life’s work as a clergyman in the shadow of York Minster.

Between 1922 and 1925 Yorkshire County Cricket Club won the County Championship four years in a row, making it one of the most successful sides ever in the history of the English county game. A line-up which included Wilfred Rhodes, Percy Holmes, Herbert Sutcliffe, Roy Kilner, George Macaulay and Maurice Leyland dominated English cricket for much of the decade, taking a highly professional approach to the game. Unsurprisingly, they were heroes to many, but despite this success, the side was at times unpopular and the subject of trenchant criticism. A Game Divided takes as its starting point the events during the match between Yorkshire and Middlesex at Sheffield in July 1924, which provoked a falling out between the counties. These events and how they were portrayed shine a light on many of the divisions in English cricket of the time – between north and south, amateur and professional, employer and employee, and between different perspectives on sportsmanship and the style in which the game should be played. The book looks at the triumphs and troubles that shaped Yorkshire cricket in the decade and asks just how great was this side of match-winners.