Lancashire’s Reggie Spooner was one of Neville Cardus’s boyhood heroes. In Autobiography, Cardus writes that with MacLaren, Spooner and Tyldesley, ‘No team has ever opened an innings with a more brilliant trio of stroke-players. Reggie Spooner was the lyrical batsman - Herrick to the Gibbon prose of a MacLaren innings.’ (Herrick was an English pastoral poet, while Gibbon was famous for his six-volume history of the Roman Empire.) Spooner was one of the finest amateurs of the so called ‘Golden Age’, while MacLaren was an ‘amateur’ in name only, thanks to the generosity of the Lancashire Committee.
In this short book, Martin Tebay highlights Spooner’s performances in four matches in August 1899. In the first, Spooner captained Marlborough against Rugby at Lord’s and made 69 and 198. This performance did not go unnoticed at Old Trafford and three days later, Spooner made his debut for the Lancashire Second XI against Surrey. The young man made 158.
A week later, Spooner, still only 18, made his first-class debut for Lancashire against Middlesex at Lord’s. He top-scored in both innings, facing a bowling attack led by the Australian Albert Trott, who took 12 wickets in the match. The Guardian described Spooner as ‘the most promising bat who has come out for a long time’. The fourth match was against the Australians at Aigburth, and was drawn owing to rain. Spooner top scored in both innings.
These four matches occupy most of Tebay’s book, but he does add some tantalising biographical material. Born in Litherland, Lancashire in October 1880, Spooner’s father was a ‘Clerk in Holy Orders’. Census data reveals a household with three domestic servants. Despite his performances in August 1899, Spooner joined the Lancashire Militia in Ireland. After the Second Boer War, he resigned his commission with the Manchester Regiment. Spooner played first-class cricket from 1899 to 1921, including 10 Tests for England. As a genuine amateur, Spooner’s opportunities were often limited.
Tebay states that a full-length biography of Spooner is ‘long overdue’. We concur wholeheartedly. Perhaps this delightful book could become one of the early chapters?
Ric Sissons (ACS book review, February 2026)
There are constant reminders in life of how the past is ‘a foreign country’, and as an indication of how things were done differently a hundred years ago, we have this engaging story of a leg-spinner who was able to play first-class cricket in his time off from teaching at Dulwich College, and who despite being universally acknowledged as a poor bat whose fielding was an attribute to the opposition was selected for England in the last Test of the 1933 summer. He was also selected to go on the winter tour of India, under the captaincy of Douglas Jardine, but a combination of illness and poor form at the wrong time led to his omission from the side, and by the time of the 1934 season, Marriott was no longer uppermost in the selectors’ minds. He never played another Test match, despite figures of 11-96 on debut.
The various photos in this book of Charles Marriott’s ungainly action underline the fact that he was self-taught, and most modern coaches would have been horrified by his approach. Yet his was a successful method, and although his teaching commitments prevented him from turning out regularly, when he was able to play he often matched ‘Tich’ Freeman in wicket-taking.
Christened ‘Charlie’, for most of his adult life Marriott’s Christian name was usually given as Charles, but he was almost universally known as ‘Father’. Various theories exist as to why, including the fact that he may have appeared significantly older than other undergraduates at Cambridge in the 1920s, but the most likely seems to be that it was an ecclesiastical reference. One of the leading members of the Oxford Movement, an influential High Anglican group of the nineteenth century, was named Charles Marriott, and had edited a series entitled ‘The Library of the Fathers’. It is hard to imagine a modern cricketer having a nickname of such provenance.
A new book by Max Bonnell is always a cheering prospect and this one did not disappoint. Quite apart from the very unusual circumstances of his international career, Marriott is a particularly interesting character. He had a distinguished war record, and indeed the book opens with a vivid account of his experiences on the Western Front. And he was a friend and regular correspondent of two other well-known war veterans, Siegfried Sassoon and Edmund Blunden - both of whom were also keen cricketers and appear to have been enthused by having a first-class cricketer as a friend. Highly recommended.
Richard Lawrence (ACS book review, February 2026)
Award-winning author Stephen Musk has made an important contribution to cricket history in recent years, notably with his biography of Bart King, which is one of the finest examples of its kind to have crossed my desk. With this new biography, he shows an equally assured touch with a far less well known subject. He has chosen an unusual structure for his book. Only 14 out of 92 pages are given over to a narrative account of Shore’s career. The remainder is arranged on a thematic basis, giving Musk the scope to analyse Shore’s bowling style, his relationship with amateurs, his receipt of a benefit and other such interesting subjects, while avoiding the notorious pitfalls of cricketing biography. A conventional biography of a fairly obscure nineteenth-century cricketer could have been a rather dull experience for both writer and reviewer alike. But in this reviewer’s opinion, the structure works, with the result that the book is thoroughly interesting throughout. (ACS Journal)