Review: Archie Henderson

London Falling: A mysterious death in a gilded city and a family’s search for truth, by Patrick Radden Keefe (Picador) 

What made Zac Brettler, a privileged 19-year-old, jump to his death from the fifth floor of a glitzy London block of flats on the north shore of the Thames?

Who knows?  Scotland Yard bungled the investigation and the coroner appeared indifferent to the anguish of a family seeking answers. Not even the notorious London tabloids, who would usually smell out a story like that quickly, got a sniff.

By a set of coincidences, the story instead fell into the lap of reporter Patrick Radden Keefe of The New Yorker, a serious magazine that doesn’t go in for Second Coming-type headlines or lurid, racy, demotic copy. No Rich Kid dies in Upmarket Apartment Plunge for him or his magazine. The tabloids might even have had a strapline: MI6 saw death fall – and did nothing.

The facts of those imagined headlines would not have been wrong. Zac fell to his death, his thigh clipping part of the building close to where he landed. Did the injury on the way down render him unconscious, did he drown in the Thames? Or was he still alive when he landed? None of those questions were answered by those investigating his death. Continue reading →

Review: Archie Henderson

Test Cricket: A History, by Tim Wigmore (Quercus)

To write the history of Test cricket in one volume is a bit like trying to score a century before lunch, take a hat-trick by tea and win by an innings before close of play. Can’t be done. Now Tim Wigmore might have done it.

It had been done only once before, but at a time when there was a lot less to write about. A History of Cricket by Jim Swanton and Harry Altham was first published in 1926 when Test cricket had not yet reached its 50s. By the time of its 1962 edition it had grown into two substantial volumes.

The scale of Wigmore’s undertaking is enormous. To give an idea how difficult it must have been to contain Test cricket to a single volume, consider this: eminent historian and former first-class cricketer Andre Odendaal wrote three volumes on just South African cricket. And Wisden needs between 1 500 and 1 700 pages to cover one season. When the compact, distinctively yellow-covered almanack, which can also serve as a doorstopper, first appeared in the 19^th century, it was under 200 pages. Continue reading →