Overview

With humour and affection national treasure Dickie Bird travels around Britain and details what he loves best about it. Some of those Dickie meets in his travels are celebrities who, like him, have reached the top of their professions - sports heroes like Sir Steve Redgrave or media stars like Rory Bremner - but so many more are ordinary, but very special folk: Macmillan nurses, or the proprietor of his favourite Pennine transport cafe. Each encounter will as likely as not remind him of some ripe anecdote from his thirty years behind the stumps. But everywhere he goes the nation's favourite umpire manages to bring out the best in the people he encounters, with his quirky curiosity and his unerring ability to winkle out the genuine individualists and the passionately committed who make up the many faceted face of Britain in the twenty-first century.

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Reviews

Only Shakespeare could have invented a character so full of life's rich juices as Dickie Bird. Cricket's genius has been to accommodate his foibles and celebrate his humour. My delight has been in knowing him for all these years. - Michael Parkinson

Dickie Bird is undoubtedly one of the best-known cricketing celebrities Britain has produced; his colourful personality and forthright opinions have been entertaining the crowds for more than 40 years. During his early days as a county cricketer and later as probably the most famous umpire the country has ever known, he won the affections of fans and laymen alike. Now retired from his national and international career and keen to follow on from the bestselling success of his autobiography and its sequel, White Cap and Bails, Dickie has turned his patriotic attention towards the country itself. During nine months of travel, which took him from Devon to Tyneside, through the valleys of Wales and into the Highlands of Scotland, Dickie revisited favourite places, discovered new ones, renewed past friendships and made many more. Accompanying him whenever possible was the photographer Derry Brabbs, whose colourful photographs are used to illustrate every step of the journey, with great effect. Although Dickie encounters his fair share of celebrities and sports stars along the way, including Michael Aspel and Bobby Robson, he goes out of his way to befriend everyone he meets. He really is an everyman, as comfortable in the company of the Duchess of Devonshire as he is with the proprietors of the Small Fry fish and chip shop in Scarborough. Whether watching Scottish caber tossing, munching on bacon butties at Old Trafford, or taking tea at the Ritz, Dickie is sure to be reminded of an apt anecdote or tall story from his cricketing past. This is a celebration of all things British and it's infused with such infectious enthusiasm that by the end of the book the reader yearns to pack up a suitcase and head out into the countryside. (Kirkus UK)

Author Information

Born in 1933, the son of a miner, Dickie Bird has spent a life 'married to cricket'. He was signed up to play for Yorkshire at age 19, and played on the county circuit for the next 13 years. In 1979 he became a Test match umpire. The announcement that he would umpire his final Test at Lord's in June 1996 signalled the end of an international career which has won him worldwide affection as the finest umpire in cricket history.

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