Book Review: Cardus Uncovered: the Truth, the Untruth and the Higher Truth by Christopher O'Brien

I grew up with the writings on cricket of Neville Cardus.

Through his prolific works I became acquainted with the greats of the pre First World War 'Golden Age', as well as the wonderful players between the two wars.

He captured the character, the period and the whimsy of the game like no one I had read before, nor indeed since. Other writers impressed and captured my imagination in due course, but none has ever done so like Cardus.

Yet as I grew older I began to realise that the writing masked considerable inadequacies with regard to the actual events. The personality of Yorkshire cricketer Emmott Robinson, for example, was a creation of the writer, confirmed by the player, who said that he had never met him. 'I attributed to him the words that God intended him to say' said Cardus, his 'histrionic pen' rounding a character forever more.

Indeed, as this book confirms, Cardus was adept at writing match reports when he had seen none of the action. He was also inconsistent in his writing, confusing dates and deeds on a regular basis, laid a considerable smokescreen over his childhood days and never let research get in the way of his storytelling.

Some of this can be put down to the failing memories of an old man, perhaps more to a lack of source material, at that time, with which to verify those recollections. One gets the impression that such things probably didn't matter to much to Cardus, who made his name as the cricket correspondent for the Manchester Guardian, before spreading his wings and moving to London.

Was he really the illegitimate offspring of an unknown father and a prostitute? Did he really emerge from the slums of Manchester to become a revered, knighted writer on both cricket and music? Was there really universal acclaim for his writing, and was he the talented young cricketer that he professed to be?

The answers to these questions can be found in this wonderful book that I read, captivated, in four days. The author has done an extraordinary job in researching not just the genealogy of the subject, but also the accuracy of many of his stories.

In many instances, Cardus is found wanting. Not, I suspect through intentional deceit, but simply because he had taken at face value what he had been told about his family and had no means of verifying it. His birth date was wrong, he adopted the name of Neville and many of his published childhood memories are proven here to be falsehoods.

As for his cricket writing, Cardus enlivened the mundane with a fertile imagination and a vocabulary non pareil. A 'higher truth', as he called it, perhaps what he fancied should have been said and done, rather than what actually happened. Thus, Tom Richardson wasn't 'led wearily to the Old Trafford pavilion' at the end of an 1896 Test match. Rather he 'legged it like a stag and got two pints in before anyone else'.

His private life is cloaked in mystery, with a wife who was a 'life partner' but infrequently living under the same roof, or even in the same city. There was also a long-term mistress and stories of close female friends that made his life as exceptional as his writing.

Christopher O'Brien is a Derbyshire member who grew up in the shadow of Old Trafford Cricket Ground and has produced an excellent, self-published book. Having spent years in the business of information retrieval, I am genuinely in awe of the research that went into this book.

I would heartily recommend it to anyone who has enjoyed the writings of Neville Cardus. While it could have been done as a 'hatchet job' on his reputation, it is an acceptance of his failings, while at the same time being an appreciation of his genius.

That isn't too strong a word. Whether one can take his writings as a document of fact is questionable. Yet the truth remains that Cardus popularised, romanticised and glamorised cricket like no one before,  or since.

A recommended read, for sure.

Cardus Uncovered: The Truth, the Untruth and the Higher Truth is written by Christopher O'Brien and is available from all good book sellers, priced £10