New Releases

Sandy Nairn (1966, A) Unbound William Grenfell (1855-1945), later Lord Desborough, was a brilliant all-round sportsman who became a great public servant, most famous for overseeing the first Olympics in London in 1908, staged at less than two years notice in a brandnew White City stadium.

Having been a cricketer and exceptional runner at school, Grenfell took up rowing at Oxford, later describing himself as being ‘fired by the rowing mania’, and rowing for the University in the contentious dead-heat Boat Race of 1877. Already elected as an MP for Hereford, he rowed in the Grand Challenge Cup in 1881. He became a champion at racing punting, while undertaking feats such as rowing across the Channel in a clinker eight. Later in life Desborough became an advocate for wider participation in sport and, as Chairman of the Thames Conservancy, supervised crucial flood relief measures and the re-building of locks.

Sandy Nairne and Peter Williams have researched the fascinating life of Desborough under the title, Titan of the Thames. Radleians may know Desborough’s name from the Thames, from the Olympic movement or from early 20th century politics, but this is the first account of his work as a great sportsman and campaigner, and of family life with Ettie, and the tragic loss of their sons Julian, Billy and Ivo.

Published by Unbound, advance subscription is available at - https:// unbound.com/books/titan/

Ed Moisson (1986, G) Agenda Fund management companies control more than $100 trillion of financial assets globally, but they remain poorly understood and investment scandals, such as that surrounding Neil Woodford, persist. Whereas most literature on the industry focuses on how managers invest, this book explores the way these businesses operate as businesses and how they make their money. Fund managers increasingly talk about sustainability and purpose, but they are clear this should not hinder their ability to churn out new products or preserve their sizeable margins. The Economics of Fund Management examines the inherent tensions and potential conflicts of interest within asset managers that seek to keep both clients and shareholders happy. The book addresses how asset management businesses work and casts a critical eye over the way firms operate and make money.

Christopher Sandford (1970, C) Pitch Publishing Laker and Lock is the first dual biography of Surrey and England 'spin twins' Jim Laker and Tony Lock, who helped their county and Test teams to an unparalleled run of dominance in the 1950s. Besides their peerless achievements on the field, the two men had little in common. Laker, the elder by seven years, was Yorkshire born, cool, phlegmatic, known to sulk, and not greatly enamoured with the class distinctions then inherent in English cricket and society as a whole. Lock, a southerner, was dynamic, ebullient, indefatigable both on and off the field, and tended to wear his heart on his sleeve, an attitude no less at odds with the prevailing social order. Both men courted controversy. Laker's post-retirement autobiography caused such a furore that he was made unwelcome at Lord's and the Oval for years afterwards. Lock suffered the stigma of being labelled a 'chucker' and ultimately moved to Australia, where his retirement was clouded by allegations of sexual abuse. This is the full story of the pair's uneasy partnership.

John Nugée (1969, H) Laburnum Publishing Sailing Free follows the life of Kári Ragnarsson, an Icelandic shipowner and merchant, and his brother Guðmundr, who dutifully takes over the family farm, as they traverse adulthood against a backdrop of 11th century Iceland. Kári’s business takes him across the northern seas to Orkney, Scotland and England, where he learns the ways of trading in the Viking world, while Guðmundr gets caught up in a complicated love triangle that becomes a dispute with a local chieftain and threatens to ruin his family. All around greedy neighbours seek to amass power and subvert Iceland’s ancient liberties; feuds are common and justice is being eroded and abused by those in charge.

An unexpected storm drives Kári and his men to distant lands, where he falls foul of a powerful king and is forced to fight for his life and his freedom overseas, before returning to Iceland to find himself having to repel attacks on his family’s farm and way of life. As Church and State lock horns over Iceland’s legal customs and way of life, Kári is compelled to defend much more than his family’s fortunes.

Through the medium of a traditional saga, Sailing Free uses the history of the Icelandic Commonwealth to explore questions of politics, religion and sovereignty, themes which are just as relevant today as they were a thousand years ago.

Ed Lines (1998, B) Independently published In 2009, four British university graduates rode 3,000 kilometres along the spine of the perilous Andes mountains. Their sixmonth adventure took them through Ecuador and Peru, along the ancient routes of the Incas, the largest pre-Columbian empire in South America. Trekking with their noble criollo horses through precipitous mountain, dense jungle and searing desert, enduring altitudes up to 15,000 feet, they are exposed to some of the most savage terrain on Earth. On their path, they experience injury and disease, find themselves held at gunpoint, and become subjected to the immense instability of the Andean elements.

Inca Ride is the story of their journey, their friendship and humour, the companionship with their horses, and their human encounters along the way. This is a tale that will captivate travellers, horse enthusiasts and those with a love of the happenstance of life itself.

All proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to Alzheimer’s Society UK (Reg. No. 296645) and Médecins sans Frontières (Reg. No. 1026588) https://amzn.eu/d/38Q9zWN

Troubador As both mental health and head injuries in sport are under scrutiny, Peter Johnson explores the demands of professional sport.

On their final day at Oakwood Primary two talented pupils, Sam Martin, the best in school at sport, and Charlie Woods, its brightest academic prospect, go head to head in the Year 6 fifty metre dash. It is a day neither of them will forget.

Afterwards they go their separate ways to different schools. Charlie achieves her goal of gaining a place to read engineering at Imperial College London and Sam fulfils his dream of winning a professional rugby contract but struggles with the physical and mental pressures inherent in playing sport for a living.

When life changing events bring the two together again, can the spark of friendship that Sam and Charlie felt when they were young be rekindled? A story of loss, love, frustrated ambitions and shattered hopes unfolds as they strive to overcome their emotional and physical challenges.

Clive Stafford Smith (1973, F) Harvill Secker Clive explores the parallel lives of his father Dick and his client Larry Lonchar, who were both labelled bi-polar disorder (and suffered from the stigma of it, as well as its manifestations). Ultimately the book questions our very approach to what we label ‘mental illness’ and questions whether we would not often do better to seek how best each person can be accommodated by society, rather than be forced to conform to it. In seeking to destigmatise what both Dick and Larry went through, Clive also delves into his own ‘idiosyncrasies’, including how the emotional damage caused by being ‘sent away’ to boarding school at a very young age actually prepared him for the trauma of having to be with his death row clients in the execution chamber.

Andrew Robinson (1960, H) The Hovel Press These are poems founded in interpersonal experience, treating of love & loss, shipwreck and other journeys, joy & grief. Mostly soliloquies voiced by various imagined or other persons. Some are light; others are dark, and angry.

The range is from versions of Catullus to Putin’s War, teenage romance to incestuous rape, Evensong to waking visions in the churchyard. Briefly to read through the whole book in an hour, but with the depth to entirely engage the heart & mind.

Copies of In Personam are available from the author. Please email carvoza@gmail.com, or send £10 and a self-addressed A5 envelope to Andrew W S Robinson (H1960) 13 Carvoza Rd, Truro, TR1 1BA.

Independently published Leo Keening, recently bereaved, is taking some recovery time on the Greek island of Skiathos, where he meets a Danish couple, Mette and Mogens Madsen. One morning Mogens fails to return from his morning run and is found dead on the steps leading to their B&B. ‘Obviously’ an accident, but not to Mette, who believes her husband may have been killed because he is leader of the Danish ‘Frihetsparti’, which seeks to leave the European Union. Leo offers Mette help and a shoulder to cry on during this traumatic time, accompanying her to a Greek priest who is running a ‘Grexit’ campaign, similar to Mogens. Does Father Evangelos have any ideas about who might have wanted Mogens dead? Assuming he was murdered, which only Mette really believes. Picking up new characters en-route, we visit Rome, Denmark, and Florida. Then to Oman in the Middle East, for the tense and unexpected finale.

Mark Floyer (Hon Member) Cyberwit Like most of us, when the Coronavirus Pandemic struck in March 2020, Mark Floyer was forced to re-think his priorities and tackle his days differently. The world no longer provided distractions for the reluctant writer and there was little to prevent him from confronting the blank page on the screen every morning. Harvesting is a book of memoirs covering a childhood in post-colonial India, a career in teaching in prose and poetry.

Mark Floyer (Hon Member) Cyberwit More Harvesting is the sequel to Harvesting (Cyberwit, 2020) and forms a series of essays about childhood, transient time, ancestral history, cricket & poetry, Devon and the writing of diaries. Written in both poetry and prose, these reflective writings sum up some of the experiences of a full life lived working in academia, writing poetry, playing cricket and raising a family.

Harry Parker (1996, D) Wellcome Collection A gripping, eye-opening account of how technology might be about to alter our understanding of what it means to be human. Harry Parker’s life changed overnight when he lost his legs to an IED in Afghanistan. That took him into an often surprising landscape of a very human kind of hacking, and he wondered, are all humans becoming hybrids? Whether it’s putting on contact lenses every day or DIY biohackers tinkering in garages, Parker introduces us to the exhilarating breadth of human invention – and intervention. Grappling with his own new identity and disability, he discovers the latest robotics, tech and implants that might lead us to powerful, liberating possibilities for what a body can be. A BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week.

The Merlin Press co-authored with Professor Stephen Roberts ‘In Birmingham you may generally recognise a board school by it being the best building in the neighbourhood, with its lofty towers, gabled windows, warm red bricks and stained glass.’ So observed the Pall Mall Gazette in 1894. The famous civic gospel shaped Birmingham as ‘the best governed city in the world.’ The inspiration for the transformation of Birmingham in the second half of the 19th century came from the sermons of ‘the greatest talker in England’ George Dawson. The men who oversaw the improvement of the town mostly sat on Sunday mornings in the pews of the Church of the Saviour. These were the men who were responsible for: a unique memorial library dedicated to the works of Warwickshire’s very own William Shakespeare; the foremost intellectual centre (the Birmingham and Midland Institute); the first municipal technical school; the most famous art school in the country; and an enviable new art gallery. This is an important book because it book recovers the stories of a group of men of vision behind the elevation and civilising of Birmingham’s citizens, men who have not received their due: the architect J.H. Chamberlain, the Shakespeare scholar Sam Timmins, the reforming lawyer Arthur Ryland, the newspaper proprietor J.T. Bunce, the ministers R.W. Dale and Henry Crosskey and others in seeking to nurture intellectual development and aesthetic taste with art and technical education, free libraries and fine civic architecture.

Michael Dussek (1971, D) SOMM Recordings This superbly engineered album features the music of the Czech composer Jan Ladislav Dussek, played by the elegant and technically flawless English pianist Michael Dussek, a descendant of the composer. The album also features two works by Fryderyk Chopin including Chopin's PolonaiseFantaisie, with which Michael Dussek won the Wharton Piano Prize in 1975, and the music is complimented by insightful liner notes.

Dussek’s music has deep roots in the late works of the Classicists, but he decidedly broke with the sound of the past by penning intensely Romantic music that made unprecedented pianistic demands both on the interpreters of his compositions and on the very instruments on which his music was to be played.