No . 131
The Trusty Servant
The Altham – Bradman Letters
Robin Brodhurst ( grandson of Harry Altham ( Co Ro , 1913-55 )), who has compiled and edited an intriguing collection of his grandfather ’ s letters , writes :
This small volume concentrates on the correspondence between two eminent cricket administrators as they wrestled with what appeared to be the intractable problems of throwing and negative cricket . If that sounds dry as dust , read on .
HSA by Edward Nelson
There are certain sounds that can take the mind back to moments in childhood : the clang of the gate into the drive at Kingsgate House reminds me irresistibly of growing up in Beloe ’ s , the call of a seagull takes me straight back to holidays at Polzeath in North Cornwall , while the ‘ pock ’ of bat on ball takes my mind straight to New Field . My mind drifts back to walking out of Beloe ’ s drive , along Kingsgate Street , past Science Block and Meadow House , past Mill and on past The Queen to Kingsmead , where our grandfather , Harry Altham lived . The house is wholly changed today , converted into flats , but back in the 1950s and ’ 60s , the front steps rose to a hall , and if you were lucky , you might be invited down into what was called The Den – Harry ’ s study . Here mingled the damp air of a basement with the tobacco of his pipe , the smell of many books and of a horse-hair stuffed sofa . This was where he did most of his research and his writing . At one stage everybody entering it was required to pick up a bat , and how they did so was examined and noted . Here too , were his archives , his papers and speeches stored in an old roll-top filing cabinet .
After Harry died his widow , Alison , stayed on there . He had never owned his own property , moving to Kingsmead after retiring from Furley ’ s in 1947 , ostensibly as careers officer , available to take over somebody ’ s teaching in an emergency , as he did when my father , AH ‘ Podge ’ Brodhurst ( Co Ro , 46-76 ), went on the MCC tour of Canada in 1951 . Eventually , in 1970 , Alison moved with us into that beautiful house , Witham Close , and the cricket books came to me , along with that filing cabinet . Among the papers I must have looked at these letters , but put them back probably saying , ‘ Those are interesting ’, but doing no more than that . There were other collections too : sadly , only one side of two particular correspondences with George Lyttelton ( contemporary housemaster at Eton , father of Humphrey ) and Charles Lyttelton , Viscount Cobham ( later Governor General of New Zealand , and fellow committee member at Lord ’ s ), as well as correspondence with Field Marshal Montgomery over a speech Harry wrote for him to give at an MCC dinner in 1956 . Many years later I typed them all up , and footnoted much of them , but no more .
HSA with Podge Brodhurst
Projects grow out of the strangest origins . When I had retired as a teacher , I became friends , through buying his books and hearing him talk , with Stephen Chalke , the owner of Fairfield Books , who has produced many of the best cricket books in the past 25 years . Stephen runs the West of England Cricket Society in Bath , and I took to going down to his monthly meetings and listening to his masterly interviewing of such luminaries as Mike Brearley , Micky Stewart and Ashley Giles . During one of the tea intervals while Stephen was unattached , I mentioned these letters to him and he encouraged me to send them to him for a look . I did so and his immediate response was ‘ These are publishable !’ From such a source this was immensely encouraging , and I met him over a superb fish lunch with publisher Christopher Saunders . It was at once agreed that the correspondence with Bradman should be separated out as an individual volume , and that I should write an introductory piece about Harry , as , sadly , many today would need to have
22