Don Bradman

After nearly a lifetime of giving pleasure to those who read about cricket, Ray Robinson died in 1982. This collection of thirty-one articles which previously had appeared in various publications over a span of sixty years, has been admirably selected and introduced by Jack Pollard. Moreover, it is accompanied by a graceful and generous foreword by Sir Donald Bradman. Some pieces are better known than others. Certainly are those which first appeared in Robinson's hardbacked books. What we must particularly thank Pollard for is collecting some of that writing which was first published in not so durable magazines or newspapers. This commemorative volume therefore should delight many.

At last, new Bradman territory to be conquered: the Don 1939–45 or, if we discount the ‘phoney war’ (‘Business as Usual’, as Robert Menzies said of that first phase in World War II), perhaps 1941–45. I imagined a slim volume. Not so! Instead, there is a catch to the subtitle of Bradman’s War: How the 1948 Invincibles Turned the Cricket Pitch into a Battlefield, which indicates that we will be on more familiar terrain.‘More familiar’ because this book is an attempt at revisionist history. Questioning the Bradman idolatry and the invincibility of the Invincibles is a suitable aim. However, the main task for the revisionist historian is to provide either fresh new evidence or a powerful reinterpretation of existing evidence as part of formulating a balanced argument: Malcolm Knox does neither.