Tim Heald – författare

Elegant and sophisticated biography of Princess Margaret, the controversial sister of Queen Elizabeth II, the Princess Diana of her day'A fascinating insight into the life of the party girl who became an icon in postwar Britain' DAILY EXPRESS'She was a witty, intelligent, stimulating companion - happily Tim Heald captures all these qualities in his admirably well-balanced biography' LITERARY REVIEWThe almost universal conception is that the life of Princess Margaret (1930-2002) was a tragic failure, a history of unfulfilment.Tim Heald's vivid and elegant biography portrays a woman who was beautiful and sexually alluring - even more so than Princess Diana, years later - and whose reputation for naughtiness co-existed with the glamour. The mythology is that Margaret's life was 'ruined' by her not being allowed to marry the one true love of her life - Group Captain Peter Townsend - and that therefore her marriage to Lord Snowdon and her well-attested relationships with Roddy Llewellyn and others were mere consolation prizes. Margaret's often exotic personal life in places like Mustique is a key part of her story. The author has had extraordinary help from those closest to Princess Margaret, including her family (Lord Snowdon and her son, Lord Linley), as well as three of her private secretaries and many of her ladies in waiting. These individuals have not talked to any previous biographer. He has also had the Queen's permission to use the royal archives.Heald asks why one of the most famous and loved little girls in the world, who became a juvenile wartime sweetheart, ended her life a sad wheelchair-bound figure, publicly reviled and ignored. This is a story of a life in which the private and the public seemed permanently in conflict. The biography is packed with good stories. Princess Margaret was never ignored; what she said and did has been remembered and recounted to Tim Heald.

Cricket books should meet one or more of these necessary requirements, being either literate and amusing to read, or meticulously researched, or original in concept. Tim Heald's THE CHARACTER OF CRICKET triumphantly meets all three,' said Benny Green in 1986. Nearly twenty years later, at an annual cricket dinner, Tim Heald found himself wondering about the essential characteristics of an institution that has been a defining feature of English life for the best part of two hundred years: village cricket. What exactly was it? How had it got there? Do our prejudices match the reality. To investigate the past and present of village cricket, he set off on a tour that took him from Cornwall to Lancashire, from the cradle of cricket in Kent and Sussex to Lord's itself. Tim tells the story of a match in each village he visits as a backdrop to a mix of history and anecdote about 'the grass roots'. He even returns from retirement to venture on to the field of play. The eleven that he captains against a team from his local club includes the formidable talent of two of his sons, a very modern major-general and the Bishop of Truro. Yet somehow he still ends up with dramatic bruising to his calves, chest and ego.