Harold Avery (1869–1943)

This copy belonged to Reginald Howard, Xmas 1933, from Craven School, stamped 733, Old Kent Road, S.E. There are five stories, two by Harold Avery and one by Gordon Whitehead, A.S.Jackson and 'The house match' by Arnold Haythorne. There is a colourful front board cover with serious looking boys squeezed at their separate wooden desks in blue, yellowy green and orange.

A rather contrived school story with a school house cricket match at the heart of it all. As with most such stories, cricket serves the theme: 'the game is all that counts' (page 285). The dust jacket is good with its typical 1950s image of schoolboys batting and fielding in their caps, all smiling, pavilion and scoreboard in the background.

Boy in orange/red cap shapes up to bat on colourful front cover. From the library of Anthony Woodhouse

Bears the splendid cricketing bookplate of Anthony Woodhouse. Full of lines such as `What d'you mean?' gasped Braxton; `What a lie!', retorted Braxton hotly, `You beastly cad' and `You cheeky young hound'. Topping stuff.