Stephen Bignell

The Last Ball of Summer Stephen Bignell

ENGLAND WILL NEVER BE THE SAME.

Loosely based on the sad tale of the cricketers of Clifton College, whose cricket first eleven all volunteered for active service at the commencement of the First World War, suffering the inevitable consequences.

The story follows the early adventures of the cricket-mad public schoolboys of Wickham Dale, where sexual scandals are simmering beneath the surface. The boys smutty, knockabout, knob-orientated humour is a spoof of the 'Boy's Own' derring-do adventures in early C20 junior fiction, as is the underlying morality of the time, cricket etiquette and outdated values that perished on the bloody fields of Flanders and France.

Underpinning the story is the relationship between shy, introverted would-be poet Jack Bigglesworth and his childhood playmate, the liberated, free-spirited, audacious and impetuous Kitty Ketteridge.

Their subsequent fate, anguish and disillusionment of the survivors is recounted in awful detail, as is the deserved fate of the school miscreants.