Overview

Here is the inside story of Fairfield Books: from its beginnings in the cricket coaching that the 45-year-old Stephen Chalke sought in the autumn of 1993 through the journeys around England and Wales that generated his first book 'Runs in the Memory' and on to the publication of 42 titles. The characters are recalled, the issues involved in creating books based on oral testimony considered, and the triumphs and disasters of small-scale publishing described. There are moments of great humour and harrowing tragedy, of unnerving encounters and unexpected revelations. 'Through The Remembered Gate' tells the story of a journey of discovery. Its author starts out with a desire to write but little knowledge of publishing, and with a love of cricket but no significant contacts in the game. By a series of accidents he becomes a chronicler of cricket's past and an established publisher of his own and others' books. Despite its moments of sorrow, it is a tale filled with joys. Into this rich mix the author adds a little of his own back story, revealing how these journeys into cricket's past have led him to see the world of his childhood with a fresh perspective.

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9781999655891

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Stephen Chalke is probably the greatest oral historian of cricket ever. This memoir may be his best book. I urge you to buy it. It tells of Chalke’s 23 years at Fairfield Books, his homespun publishing house (literally a house in this case). There he was everything from MD to writer to delivery man until retirement this year. But that is only the framework, the trellis. Through it runs vivid social history, autobiography, and – in full vibrancy – the lives of county cricketers of the 1950s and 60s. That drabber, brighter, harsher, kinder, poorer, richer age. Paul Coupar-Hennessy, The Cricketer; Through the Remembered Gate is a candid and sympathetic memoir by Stephen Chalke, who since the late 1990s has through his research, writing and publishing transformed our understanding of the postwar game. David Kynaston, choosing it as his Book of the Year in The New Statesman

Stephen Chalke is probably the greatest oral historian of cricket ever. This memoir may be his best book. I urge you to buy it. It tells of Chalke's 23 years at Fairfield Books, his homespun publishing house (literally a house in this case). There he was everything from MD to writer to delivery man until retirement this year. But that is only the framework, the trellis. Through it runs vivid social history, autobiography, and - in full vibrancy - the lives of county cricketers of the 1950s and 60s. That drabber, brighter, harsher, kinder, poorer, richer age. Paul Coupar-Hennessy, The Cricketer; Through the Remembered Gate is a candid and sympathetic memoir by Stephen Chalke, who since the late 1990s has through his research, writing and publishing transformed our understanding of the postwar game. David Kynaston, choosing it as his Book of the Year in The New Statesman

Author Information

Stephen Chalke has been writing about cricket history since 1996. He established Fairfield Books to publish books both by himself and by other authors, with eight of its titles winning national awards. In 2019 the Cricket Writers' Club presented him with the prestigious Peter Smith Award for Services to Cricket.

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