During one long summer during the mid-1980's, Tim Heald toured England, absorbing the flavour of at least one cricket ground in every first-class county, and a good many more besides. He wanted to discover the true character of the English game, among those who ate, slept and dreamt cricket in all corners of the country. The results are charming, heart-warmingly funny, and often surprising. In conversation with the kind of people who give the game its backbone – a gateman at Leicester, the groundsman at Swansea, a programme-seller at Bristol, a quintessential cricket-mad parson at Chelmsford – the author evokes some colourful ghosts, from the ubiquitous W.G. Grace (once punched in the face in Northampton) to Prebendary Wickham of Martock, and hears some strange stories – the Derbyshire captain absconding with the cash (and ending up as a tailor for the King of Spain); the Nottinghamshire team fielding in lounge suits; the match in which the schoolboy...

A Simon Bognor mystery - At an exclusive language school in the hills outside Salamanca, former British gangster Jimmy Trubshawe is discovered flat on his back in his luxury cabin, clad only in boxer shorts and white socks, his face an unattractive shade of purple. He is, of course, extremely dead. The cause is soon established as the ingestion of poisonous mushrooms. But was the unfortunate Trubshawe's fatal meal an accident - or murder? Alerted by his contacts in the Spanish Guardia Civil, Sir Simon Bognor decides it's his business to find out . . .

In his third adventure, Doctor Tudor Cornwall, head of criminal affairs at the University of Wessex, finds himself literally all at sea. Accompanied by his precocious star pupil, Elizabeth Burney, Tudor boards the good ship Duchess as a guest speaker on a transatlantic crossing which goes spectacularly wrong. Are the Irish journalists actually terrorists in thin disguise? Does the captain really have laryngitis? How come Freddie Grim formerly of Scotland Yard is preaching at matins? Was the flambé at Doctor and Frau Umlaut's table meant to be quite so explosive? Is Prince Abdullah a real Royal?And, most importantly of all, can Tudor solve these and other mysteries before the ship docks?