E.W. Swanton was the doyen of newspaper cricket correspondents - writing for the Daily Telegraph for forty years - and at the same time a controversial figure. The game, and values of fair play and decency - had no more passionate defender, but many found Swanton himself pompous, humourless and overbearing. But his long life comprehended almost the whole of the twentieth century, and David Rayvern Allen's equally controversial book offers a fascinating portrait of a rich and unexpected life, including aspects that many of his contemporaries have found alarming. Chief of these are the revelation that Swanton, who didn't marry until he was 50, and hitherto appeared to have no private emotional life, appears to have had a homosexual affair with a fellow soldier before the war, and that, during his wartime incarceration by the Japanese working on the infamous Burma-Siam railway, he was accused of cowardice by certain officers. Rayvern's biography is the
