I have spent my career in the university sector teaching History, retiring in 2024 from Goldsmiths, University of London.

A first degree at Royal Holloway College, London, and an MA at Swansea led on to doctoral study at Oxford where I completed my D Phil in 1990 – a study of the earls of Cawdor and their estates in Carmarthenshire.

Thereafter I worked on a range of projects relating to the history of Britain since c 1700, on themes ranging from the social history of religion, elections and electioneering, and parliamentary enclosure to Sir Robert Peel and various aspects of the twentieth century Conservative party.

Throughout I had been playing cricket mostly for the Washington Cricket Club, based at the Washington Arms in Belsize Park in London.

Wandering in one Saturday evening in February 1996, after a dismal curry next door, my friends and I spotted a cabinet full of cricket memorabilia on the wall. Inquiries at the bar led to the captain being pointed out, leaning against the wall by the fruit machine.

It turned out the club had just started their regular winter nets down the road at Lord’s: “If you’re here at 12 tomorrow lunchtime”, he said, “I’ll give you a lift down if you fancy having a go.” I woke up rather the worse for wear the next morning and lay there wondering, “they seemed nice, but can I stir myself to do this?” and then thinking: “come on, it’s Lord’s!”

And so I went, and nearly thirty years later I’m still there, having played across four decades: the 90s, the 00s, the 10s, and now the 20s.

More recently a move to Sark in Channel Islands has brought me into contact with a new cricketing fraternity, late in my cricketing career.

So cricket history brings together two halves of my life together a fitting finale! I am especially interested in the history of non-elite cricket, the game beyond the ranks of the first-class players, and the social and cultural influences which influenced the game in its formative years. The idea of ‘village cricket’ as a particularly pure and uncomplicated form of the game and as a symbol of a certain kind of Englishness forms the central theme of a new book on the ‘village game’ I am currently writing.