"Ferris’s wonderful memoir represents a twin triumph. He has endured every kind of setback in life but has invariably reinvented himself; and his writing is a pure pleasure"
— The Sunday Times
"He brilliantly evokes the daily fears and degradations caused by rabid sectarianism"
— Daily Mail
"A miscellany of weird and wonderful trivia about the game bowls over Jack Blackburn"
— The Times
"t’s almost as much fun as scoring a century. Almost."
— Daily Mail
"one of this year’s best memoirs"
— The Daily Telegraph
"transporting, beguiling and terrifically entertaining"
— Daily Mail
"what is so memorable and indeed magical is the way he interweaves the imaginary and the real"
— The Guardian
"It is unlikely that a finer travel book will be published all year"
— Literary Review
"[a] superb, elegaic portrait"
— Daily Mail
"The interest never falters in Duncan Hamilton’s life of the colourful Guardian cricket correspondent Neville Cardus, who rose from poverty to invent literary sports reporting"
— The Guardian