Gideon Haigh – författare

''Does cricket make money in order to exist, or does it exist in order to make money?'' In the last three years, cricket has changed more completely than in the preceding three decades, revolutionised by a racy new format, Twenty20, and a glamorous new competition, the Indian Premier League. How did India come to run world cricket? How did clubs owned by billionaires and Bollywood stars begin to shove international competition aside? How did money unite players and divide administrators, amid allegations of massive corruption? Gideon Haigh has followed cricket''s biggest story since Kerry Packer''s ''World Series'' from the beginning: Sphere of Influenceis the result. This insightful collection brings the struggle to save cricket''s soul into sharp and disturbing focus.

'A superb portrait of the most brilliant cricketer of his generation' Mike AthertonShane Warne dominated cricket on the field and off for almost thirty years - his skill, his fame, his personality, his misadventures. His death in March 2002 rocked Australians, even those who could not tell a leg-break from a leg-pull. But what was it like to watch Warne at his long peak, the man of a thousands international wickets, the incarnation of Aussie audacity and cheek?  Gideon Haigh saw it all, still can't quite believe it, but wanted to find a way to explain it. In this classic appreciation of Australia's cricket's greatest figure, who doubled as the nation's best-known man, Haigh relieves the highs, the lows, the fun and the follies. The result is a new way of looking at Warne, at sport and at Australia.'Bloody brilliant... As good as anything I have read on the game' GuardianWinner of The Cricket Society and MCC Book of the Year

'A superb portrait of the most brilliant cricketer of his generation' Mike Atherton Shane Warne dominated cricket on the field and off for almost thirty years - his skill, his fame, his personality, his misadventures. His death in March 2002 rocked Australians, even those who could not tell a leg-break from a leg-pull.  But what was it like to watch Warne at his long peak, the man of a thousands international wickets, the incarnation of Aussie audacity and cheek? Gideon Haigh saw it all, still can't quite believe it, but wanted to find a way to explain it. In this classic appreciation of Australia's cricket's greatest figure, who doubled as the nation's best-known man, Haigh relieves the highs, the lows, the fun and the follies. The result is a new way of looking at Warne, at sport and at Australia.'Bloody brilliant... As good as anything I have read on the game' GuardianWinner of The Cricket Society and MCC Book of the Year

For the first time since the mid-1970s, England and Australia faced each other home and away in back-to-back series in the summer and winter of 2013. Under prolific captain Alastair Cook, England went into the Ashes on the back of three unbeaten series, including a first win in India for more than 25 years. By contrast, Michael Clarke''s Australia arrived in England with an inexperienced side, changing their coach just weeks before the Ashes started. No wonder England started as strong favourites. And so it proved, as England won the home series by a 3-0 margin - their biggest Ashes win since the 1970s. But there were signs of an Australian revival in their defeat, and when England arrived Down Under, they found an entire nation ready to make things different, as the underdogs fought back. Suddenly, Australia were the better side in every aspect of the game, and they won back the Ashes after three consecutive crushing victories. Watching on as events unfolded was award-winning cricket writer Gideon Haigh. With great insight and skill, he reveals the key moments of both series, analysing the personalities of the players and how they coped with the most pressurised and high-profile cricketing contest of them all: the Ashes. No other book on the subject comes close to this one in getting to the heart of the matter.

For all the glamour and new-found wealth that has come to cricket thanks to the IPL, the sport has rarely faced such an uncertain future. The gold standard of cricket - Test matches - is being sidelined in some countries by the shorter forms of the game. While the sport is being transformed, administrators are struggling to keep pace with it all. Yet, despite all of this, the sport''s essential elements remain in place: great games are played, new stars rise up and old stars step back and retire. In this new collection of writing, Gideon Haigh takes the pulse of the game today, and in particular looks at the decline of the sport in Australia, where the once all-conquering men in the ''baggy green'' suddenly found themselves struggling to impose themselves on their opponents.

‘The year’s best cricket book’ Daily Telegraph‘Well researched and engagingly written, this exemplary work reveals a hidden history…superbly told story’ Sunday Times‘Easily the cricket book of the year, of the century…It extends the possibility of cricket-writing-as-literature’ Suresh Menon, The Hindu It is arguably the most famous photograph in the history of cricket. In George Beldam's picture, Victor Trumper is caught in mid stroke, the personification of cricketing grace, skill and power, about to hit the ball long and hard. Yet this image, 'Jumping Out', is important not only because of who it depicts, but also what it illustrates about the changing nature of the game and how it has been seen. Now, in Gideon Haigh's brilliant new book, Stroke of Genius, we learn not only about the man in the picture but also the iconography of Trumper's powerful position in cricket's mythology.  For many, Australian batsman Trumper was the greatest ever. Neville Cardus wrote: 'I have never yet met a cricketer who, having seen and played with Victor Trumper, did not describe him without doubt or hesitation as the most accomplished of all batsmen of his acquaintance.' Like Lionel Messi or Roger Federer today, he defied the obvious bounds of affiliation. Unlike the current generation of sporting stars, however, there were no memoirs or papers, very few interviews, no action footage - even his date of birth is a matter of debate and conjecture. What isn't in doubt, though, is the impact he had on the game and on his nation.  Haigh reveals how Trumper, and 'Jumping Out', helped to change cricket from the Victorian era of static imagery to something much more dynamic, modern and compelling. As such, Trumper helped not only transform cricket but even the way his country viewed itself.

One of The Times' 50 Greatest Sports BooksIn May 1977, the cricket world awoke to discover that a thirty-nine-year-old Sydney Businessman called Kerry Packer had signed thirty-five elite international players for his own televised ‘World Series’. The Cricket War is the definitive account of the split that changed the game on the field and on the screen.In helmets, under lights, with white balls, and in coloured clothes, the outlaw armies of Ian Chappell, Tony Greig and Clive Lloyd fought a daily battle of survival. In boardrooms and courtrooms Packer and cricket’s rulers fought a bitter war of nerves.A compelling account of the top-class sporting life, The Cricket War also gives a unique insight into the motives and methods of the man who became Australia’s richest, and remained so, until the day he died. It was the end of cricket as we knew it – and the beginning of cricket as we know it.Gideon Haigh has published over thirty books, over twenty of them about cricket. This edition of The Cricket War, Gideon Haigh’s first book about cricket originally published in 1993, has been updated with new photographs and a new introduction by the author.

One of The Times'' 50 Greatest Sports BooksIn May 1977, the cricket world awoke to discover that a thirty-nine-year-old Sydney Businessman called Kerry Packer had signed thirty-five elite international players for his own televised ''World Series''. The Cricket War is the definitive account of the split that changed the game on the field and on the screen.In helmets, under lights, with white balls, and in coloured clothes, the outlaw armies of Ian Chappell, Tony Greig and Clive Lloyd fought a daily battle of survival. In boardrooms and courtrooms Packer and cricket''s rulers fought a bitter war of nerves.A compelling account of the top-class sporting life, The Cricket War also gives a unique insight into the motives and methods of the man who became Australia''s richest, and remained so, until the day he died. It was the end of cricket as we knew it – and the beginning of cricket as we know it.Gideon Haigh has published over thirty books, over twenty of them about cricket. This edition of The Cricket War, Gideon Haigh''s first book about cricket originally published in 1993, has been updated with new photographs and a new introduction by the author.

One of The Times'' 50 Greatest Sports BooksIn May 1977, the cricket world awoke to discover that a thirty-nine-year-old Sydney Businessman called Kerry Packer had signed thirty-five elite international players for his own televised ''World Series''. The Cricket War is the definitive account of the split that changed the game on the field and on the screen.In helmets, under lights, with white balls, and in coloured clothes, the outlaw armies of Ian Chappell, Tony Greig and Clive Lloyd fought a daily battle of survival. In boardrooms and courtrooms Packer and cricket''s rulers fought a bitter war of nerves.A compelling account of the top-class sporting life, The Cricket War also gives a unique insight into the motives and methods of the man who became Australia''s richest, and remained so, until the day he died. It was the end of cricket as we knew it – and the beginning of cricket as we know it.Gideon Haigh has published over thirty books, over twenty of them about cricket. This edition of The Cricket War, Gideon Haigh''s first book about cricket originally published in 1993, has been updated with new photographs and a new introduction by the author.

Veteran journalist Gideon Haigh assesses the future of news media in light of the internet''s effects on traditional forms of publishing and broadcasting.In the last decade, customary news media have crumbled before the effects of the internet on advertising, circulation and viewership. In the next decade, they will be supplemented, if not supplanted, by new news media. In this insightful, informative and candid survey of possible futures, veteran journalist Gideon Haigh considers the options for his industry and his craft. Who wins? Who loses? What are the implications for practitioners, professionals, politicians and the public?Gideon Haigh is the author of twenty-six books. The five sections that comprise The Deserted Newsroom first appeared as individual pieces in Crikey''s Brave News World series.

Australia is one of just thirteen countries in the world equipped to take a car from design concept all the way to a showroom – a remarkable achievement in a market so small. Yet the industry has few friends, and many vociferous critics who argue that the country should not make cars at all.  In this engaging and insightful analysis for the lay reader, Gideon Haigh explains why the industry has become an ideological battleground, and reveals the more complex and surprising truth behind the partisan rhetoric.  

Gideon Haigh has had a front-row seat during that decline and Uncertain Corridors collects the best of his despatches, narrating the collapse of cricket''s traditional structures and the uneasy and troubled evolution of its new order, through the stories of Michael Clarke, Ricky Ponting, Mike Hussey, Shane Warne and others. As the game grows richer and crazier worldwide, thanks to the financial might of the Board of Control for Cricket in India and the unstoppable spread of T20, this is the essential guide - sports journalism at its most informed, passionate and uncompromisingly independent. ''The skill of writer Gideon Haigh is that he makes his detours into the ignored corners of cricket as fascinating as his insights into the games biggest names and issues.'' Courier Mail Praise for On Warne ''The most gifted cricket essayist of his generation.'' The Guardian ''Utterly addictive . . . this is cricket writing as art.'' Australian Book Review ''Exceptional . . . engrossing''. Herald Sun ''Haigh writes as poetically as Warne bowled . . . Simply irresistible.'' Ken Piesse, Universal''s Summer Cricket Tour Guide 2012-13

Certain Admissions is Australian true crime at its best, and stranger than any crime fiction. It is real-life police procedural, courtroom drama, family saga, investigative journalism, social history, archival treasure hunt - a meditation, too, on how the past shapes the present, and the present the past. On a warm evening in December 1949, two young people met by chance under the clocks at Flinders Street railway station. They decided to have a night on the town. The next morning, one of them, twenty-year-old typist Beth Williams, was found dead on Albert Park Beach. When police arrested the other, Australia was transfixed: twenty-four-year-old John Bryan Kerr was a son of the establishment, a suave and handsome commercial radio star educated at Scotch College, and Harold Holt''s next-door neighbour in Toorak. Police said he had confessed. Kerr denied it steadfastly. There were three dramatic trials attended by enormous crowds, a relentless public campaign proclaiming his innocence involving the first editorials against capital punishment in Australia. For more than a decade Kerr was a Pentridge celebrity, a poster boy for rehabilitation – a fame that burdened him the rest of his life. Then, shortly after his death, another man confessed to having murdered Williams. But could he be believed? ''A work of true detection that not only compels belief in its every detail but has the breathtaking suspense of that very weird and rare for of crime writing that has the truth of a work of art.'' Weekend Australian ''Haigh''s work is a mesmerising detective story itself . . . [it] finds a new twist in the archives.'' The Saturday Paper''A beautifully written, tirelessly researched and ultimately very compelling and true story . . . Fascinating and tragic.'' Herald Sun ''The trial of John Bryan Kerr was the first murder trial that I read about in detail, as a boy of eleven. I longed, even then, to know the whole story. Gideon Haigh''s book has made the wait worthwhile.'' Gerald Murnane ''In carefully and curiously lifting from the shadow the story of a lost girl and a troubled man, Haigh explores a writer''s true territory: the space between what is, and what might be.'' Sonya Hartnett ''Gideon Haigh understands the real tragedy of murder - it is never really solved.'' P. M. Newton

Sultan is the official biography of Wasim Akram, the "sultan of swing", one of the greatest fast bowlers in the history of cricket.For twenty years, Wasim Akram let his cricket do the talking – his electrifying left-arm pace, his explosive left-handed striking, his leadership and his inspiration. For another twenty years he kept his own counsel about those days, full of drama, controversy and even mystery, in a country, Pakistan, that to outsiders is a constant enigma. Until now. Sultan tells the story of cricket’s greatest left-arm bowler, and one of its greatest survivors, who was chosen from the streets of Lahore and groomed by Imran Khan to become champion of the world – man of the match in the final of the 1992 World Cup. Along the way were unforgettable rivalries with the greatest of his time, from Viv Richards and Ian Botham to Sachin Tendulkar and Shane Warne. Along the way, too, a backdrop of conspiracy and intrigue over ball tampering and match fixing about which Wasim finally sets the story straight. But there’s more: Sultan goes frankly into the crumbling and rebuilding of Wasim’s private life, marred by the tragedy of his first wife’s death and the torment of addiction. The result is an unprecedented insight into the life of a cricketer who revolutionised the game with his speed and swing, and a patriot buoyed and burdened by the expectation of one of the game’s most fanatical publics.

Today Victor Trumper is, literally, a legend – revered for deeds lost in time, a hallowed name from the golden era from before the moving image began to dictate memories and Bradman reset the records.In life, Trumper was Australia’s first world beater – at his peak just after Federation, he was not just a cricketer but an artist of the bat, the genius of a new era, a symbol of what Australia could be. Crowds flocked to his club matches, English supporters cheered him on in Tests, and at his early funeral in 1915 – even amidst the grief of war – mourners choked the streets of Sydney.Trumper lives on, not just as the name of a stand at the SCG, or a park near his former home ground. He lives in an image that captures him mid-stroke: a daring player’s graceful advance into the unknown, alive with intent and controlled abandon. Reproduced countless times in cricket books and pavilions around the world, it conjures an era, an attitude – cricket’s first imaginings of itself – and encapsulates the timeless beauty of sport like none other. If Trumper is a legend, George Beldam’s ‘Jumping Out’ has become an icon.But that image has almost paradoxically obscured the story of its subject. Man and photograph have entranced Gideon Haigh since childhood, and in Stroke of Genius he explores both the real Victor Trumper and the process of his iconography. Together they inspired a profound moral and aesthetic revaluation of the game, and changed the way we think about cricket, art and Australia. In this inventive, fresh and compelling work of history, Haigh reveals how Trumper, and Beldam’s incarnation of his brilliance, are at the intersection of sport and art, history and timelessness, reality and myth.''Haigh, cricket-lover and polymath, couldn’t write a dull book if he tried ... the book equally qualifies as art and social history.'' The Saturday Paper''Gripping ... Haigh draws on an encyclopaedic knowledge of cricketing fact and folklore ... [and] evokes an era retrospectively made golden.'' The Times''Bless all of Haigh, Beldham, Trumper and Penguin Books for combining so well here ... What Haigh has done so well in Stroke of Genius is not only intellectually restore this ubiquitous but little-understood photograph, but doff a skull cap in the direction of the man who at least equalled Trumper for brilliance in creating it. Here''s to biting of more than you can chew.'' The Guardian''There are various claimants to the title of ''world''s best cricket writer'', yet no dispute about who today, is the best writer on cricket. This is the Australian, Gideon Haigh.'' The Telegraph, Calcutta''In Stroke of Genius, Gideon Haigh has given Jumping Out and the men who created it the richly perceptive tribute they have always deserved.'' The Age''Stroke of Genius offers such numerous fresh perspectives about cricket that it is a stroke of genius itself.'' Australian Book ReviewStroke of Genius was shortlisted for the NSW Premier''s History Awards 2017.

As enigmatic in life as in death, Mollie Dean was a woman determined to transcend. Creatively ambitious and sexually precocious, at twenty-five she was a poet, aspiring novelist and muse on the peripheries of Melbourne’s bohemian salons – until one night in 1930 she was brutally slain by an unknown killer in a laneway while walking home.Her family was implicated. Those in her circle, including her acclaimed artist lover Colin Colahan, were shamed. Her memory was anxiously suppressed. Yet the mystery of her death rendered more mysterious her life and Mollie’s story lingered, incorporated into memoir, literature, television, theatre and song, most notably in George Johnston’s classic My Brother Jack.In A Scandal in Bohemia, Gideon Haigh explodes the true crime genre with a murder story about life as well as death. Armed with only a single photograph and echoes of Mollie’s voice, he has reassembled the precarious life of a talented woman without a room of her own – a true outsider, excluded by the very world that celebrated her in its art. In this work of restorative justice, Mollie Dean emerges as a tenacious, charismatic, independent woman for whom society had no place, and whom everybody tried to forget – but nobody could.''Haigh''s narrative takes shape through powerful "layers of association" ... as much a portrait of Mollie''s life and death as it is a portrayal of the city and the society in which she lived.'' Australian Book Review''In this latest addition to his true crime oeuvre, Melbourne journalist and polymath Gideon Haigh attempts to uncover Dean''s life as well as her death... the book is a fascinating exploration.'' The Saturday Paper

Longlisted for the 2022 Indie Book Awards. Longlisted for the Australian Political Book of the Year Award.Chosen as a ‘Book of the Year’ in The Australian, The Australian Financial Review and The Australian Book Review.In a quiet Sydney street in 1937, a seven year-old immigrant boy drowned in a ditch that had filled with rain after being left unfenced by council workers. How the law should deal with the trauma of the family’s loss was one of the most complex and controversial cases to reach Australia’s High Court, where it seized the imagination of its youngest and cleverest member. These days, ‘Doc’ Evatt is remembered mainly as the hapless and divisive opposition leader during the long ascendancy of his great rival Sir Robert Menzies. Yet long before we spoke of ‘public intellectuals’, Evatt was one: a dashing advocate, an inspired jurist, an outspoken opinion maker, one of our first popular historians and the nation’s foremost champion of modern art. Through Evatt’s innovative and empathic decision in Chester v the Council of Waverley Municipality, which argued for the law to acknowledge inner suffering as it did physical injury, Gideon Haigh rediscovers the most brilliant Australian of his day, a patriot with a vision of his country charting its own path and being its own example – the same attitude he brought to being the only Australian president of the UN General Assembly, and instrumental in the foundation of Israel. A feat of remarkable historical perception, deep research and masterful storytelling, The Brilliant Boy confirms Gideon Haigh as one of our finest writers of non-fiction. It shows Australia in a rare light, as a genuinely clever country prepared to contest big ideas and face the future confidently. 'Gideon Haigh has always been an exquisite wordsmith, and he proves here that he is also an intuitive historian and acute biographer with a masterful control of the broad sweep and telling detail’ AFR Books of the Year 'Here is a master craftsman delivering one of his most finely honed works. Meticulous in its research, humane in its storytelling, The Brilliant Boy is Gideon Haigh at his lush, luminous best. Haigh shines a light on person, place and era with the sheer force of his intellect and the generosity of his words. The Brilliant Boy is simply a brilliant book.' Clare Wright, Stella-Prize winning author of The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka   ‘Gideon Haigh has a nose for Australian stories that light up the past from new angles, and he tells this one with verve, grace and lightly worn erudition. I couldn’t put it down.’ Judith Brett, The Saturday Paper   ‘An absolutely remarkable, moving and elegant re-reading of the early life of an extraordinary Australian. Gideon Haigh is one of Australia's finest writers and thinkers … mesmerizing … one of the best Australian biographies I have read for a long time.' Michael McKernan, Canberra Times

Longlisted for the 2022 Indie Book Awards. Longlisted for the Australian Political Book of the Year Award.Chosen as a ‘Book of the Year’ in The Australian, The Australian Financial Review and The Australian Book Review.In a quiet Sydney street in 1937, a seven year-old immigrant boy drowned in a ditch that had filled with rain after being left unfenced by council workers. How the law should deal with the trauma of the family’s loss was one of the most complex and controversial cases to reach Australia’s High Court, where it seized the imagination of its youngest and cleverest member. These days, ‘Doc’ Evatt is remembered mainly as the hapless and divisive opposition leader during the long ascendancy of his great rival Sir Robert Menzies. Yet long before we spoke of ‘public intellectuals’, Evatt was one: a dashing advocate, an inspired jurist, an outspoken opinion maker, one of our first popular historians and the nation’s foremost champion of modern art. Through Evatt’s innovative and empathic decision in Chester v the Council of Waverley Municipality, which argued for the law to acknowledge inner suffering as it did physical injury, Gideon Haigh rediscovers the most brilliant Australian of his day, a patriot with a vision of his country charting its own path and being its own example – the same attitude he brought to being the only Australian president of the UN General Assembly, and instrumental in the foundation of Israel. A feat of remarkable historical perception, deep research and masterful storytelling, The Brilliant Boy confirms Gideon Haigh as one of our finest writers of non-fiction. It shows Australia in a rare light, as a genuinely clever country prepared to contest big ideas and face the future confidently. 'Gideon Haigh has always been an exquisite wordsmith, and he proves here that he is also an intuitive historian and acute biographer with a masterful control of the broad sweep and telling detail’ AFR Books of the Year 'Here is a master craftsman delivering one of his most finely honed works. Meticulous in its research, humane in its storytelling, The Brilliant Boy is Gideon Haigh at his lush, luminous best. Haigh shines a light on person, place and era with the sheer force of his intellect and the generosity of his words. The Brilliant Boy is simply a brilliant book.' Clare Wright, Stella-Prize winning author of The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka   ‘Gideon Haigh has a nose for Australian stories that light up the past from new angles, and he tells this one with verve, grace and lightly worn erudition. I couldn’t put it down.’ Judith Brett, The Saturday Paper   ‘An absolutely remarkable, moving and elegant re-reading of the early life of an extraordinary Australian. Gideon Haigh is one of Australia's finest writers and thinkers … mesmerizing … one of the best Australian biographies I have read for a long time.' Michael McKernan, Canberra Times

Few journalists exemplify the creed ‘without fear or favour’ like Gideon Haigh. Shelf Life selects from twenty-one years of writing on myriad subjects by one of our clearest thinkers, sharpest stylists and most curious journalists. Architecture and airline food. Depression and doodling. Goya and Grossman. Weegee and Wire. When not wiring about cricket, Gideon Haigh has enjoyed taking journalism on unexpected journeys, where curiosity calls, into the past and future as well as the present.   Edited by Russell Jackson, Shelf Life samples his work from the last two decades: essays, reportage, reviews, crisp analyses, deep dives into history, of no camp, and independent of the news cycle, from his shelves to yours.

Gideon Haigh has written numerous acclaimed books on both cricket and true-crime – now he’s unearthed a gripping story that combines the two, in a masterpiece of historical detective work that ties back to the origin of the Ashes … On the night of 23 September 1910, on a station 500km west of Brisbane, farm hand John Neil was beaten to death with a cricket bat. The prime suspect, George Vernon, was the fresh-faced twenty-four-year-old son of one of England’s most famous amateur cricketers, and part of an Australian rural dynasty. The murder trial became one of Queensland’s most sensational, for Vernon did indeed harbour a secret – but not a secret anyone suspected. And the crime was to have a shocking sequel. The Night was a Bright Moonlight and I Could See a Man Quite Plain concerns a brutal murder, but also the dark parts of empire, the blind side of justice and the sensational end of media – all linked back to the origin story of cricket’s Ashes. Sparely written and copiously illustrated, it will keep you guessing to the end.

The Ashes, the symbol of cricket supremacy between England and Australia, is the game's oldest and fiercest rivalry, still hot to the touch after a century and a quarter. The Book of Ashes Anecdotes collects hundreds of the best stories from more than 260 publications to create the fullest, fieriest and funniest account of these two nations divided by a common game.In 2005, and after 16 long years, England's cricketers regained the fabled urn in a series that fascinated and gripped cricket fans as never before. The drama of this contest raised ancitipation about the 2006-07 series to record levels, and Ashes Anecdotes provides an unrivalled collection of the highlights of this celebrated tournament.The book includes a foreword by David Frith and extracts from the best cricket writers of the past 124 years. Featured here are the giants of the game, the most memorable Ashes matches, gamesmanship, Bodyline, tales of travel, cricket fever and fan fanaticism, luck and superstition in the game, selection and sledging. It's a book no cricket fan should be without.

Nothing compares to the Ashes. The Ashes is always coming, even when it is finished. The Ashes is where hope, expectation, magic and chagrin flourish in equal measure, and performance is permanently burnished.'The best cricket writer in the world' Guardian'The Bradman of cricket writing' Sunday Telegraph'The finest cricket writer alive' The Australian'Australia's finest writer on cricket' The Times'The most gifted cricket essayist of his generation' Richard Williams, GuardianIn On The Ashes, Gideon Haigh, today's pre-eminent cricket writer, has captured over a century and a half of Anglo-Australian cricket, from WG Grace to Don Bradman, from Bodyline to Jim Laker's 19-wicket match, from Ian Botham's miracle at Headingley to the phenomena of Patrick Cummins and Ben Stokes, today's Ashes captains.From over three decades of covering The Ashes, Gideon has brought together an enduring vision of this timeless contest between Australia and England - the world's oldest sporting rivalry - from the colonial era to the present day.

Nothing compares to the Ashes. The Ashes is always coming, even when it is finished. The Ashes is where hope, expectation, magic and chagrin flourish in equal measure, and performance is permanently burnished.'The best cricket writer in the world' Guardian'The Bradman of cricket writing' Sunday Telegraph'The finest cricket writer alive' The Australian'Australia's finest writer on cricket' The Times'The most gifted cricket essayist of his generation' Richard Williams, GuardianIn On The Ashes, Gideon Haigh, today's pre-eminent cricket writer, has captured over a century and a half of Anglo-Australian cricket, from WG Grace to Don Bradman, from Bodyline to Jim Laker's 19-wicket match, from Ian Botham's miracle at Headingley to the phenomena of Patrick Cummins and Ben Stokes, today's Ashes captains.From over three decades of covering The Ashes, Gideon has brought together an enduring vision of this timeless contest between Australia and England - the world's oldest sporting rivalry - from the colonial era to the present day.

It is no mystery that today the name of Jack Iverson is virtually unknown. For most of his life he was an unexceptional estate agent in Australia. He died in obscurity, by his own hand, at the age of only 58. He was a clumsy fielder, and a hopeless batsman. But for four years he was the best spin bowler in the world.The story of Jack Iverson is one of the most remarkable in the history of cricket. ‘ Every now and then,’ wrote one journalist, ‘ there comes a man who can do the right thing the wrong way round.’ Iverson took up cricket, at the advanced age of 31, as capriciously as he left it – joining a club 3rd XI in Melbourne one day, and instantly announcing himself as the most prodigious and improbable spinner of a cricket ball.Using a unique technique he appears to have perfects with a ping-pong ball during wartime service in Papua New Guinea, he doubled back his middle finger and found he could bowl leg breaks, top spinners and googlies, every one dropped on a perfect length and impossible to pick. Within four years he was bowling the Australian Test side to victory over England in the Ashes series of 1950-51. Then, in his moment of triumph, he retired from international cricket, and was never the same bowler again.Mystery Spinner is more than that beautifully written life of an elusive and forgotten hero who, after his brief burst of celebrity, has left strangely little trace in posterity. It is also the utterly compelling story of Gideon Haigh’ s quest to solve the enduring riddle of Jack Iverson’ s life – a quest which led him across Australia following tenuous clues in school registers and county records. And above all it is a moving study, for an age that presumes sporting prowess to be the ultimate definition of personal identity, of how skill is only half the battle in sport, and how it takes an extraordinary individual to cope successfully with extraordinary achievement.

Has COVID-19 ushered in the end of the office? Or is it the office’s final triumph?For decades, futurologists have prophesied a boundaryless working world, freed from the cramped confines of the office. During the COVID-19 crisis, employees around the globe got a taste of it. Confined by lockdown to their homes, they met, mingled, collaborated, and created electronically. At length, they returned to something approaching normality. Or had they glimpsed the normal to come?In The Momentous, Uneventful Day, Gideon Haigh reflects on our ambivalent relationship to office work and office life, how we ended up with the offices we have, how they have reflected our best and worst instincts, and how these might be affected by a world in a time of contagion. Like the factory in the nineteenth century, the office was the characteristic building form of the twentieth, reshaping our cities, redirecting our lives. We all have a stake in how it will change in the twenty-first.Enlivened by copious citations from literature, film, memoir, and corporate history, and interspersed with relevant images, The Momentous, Uneventful Day is the ideal companion for a lively current debate about the role offices will play in the future.