Footprints cover
Footprints

Product details

Published 20 September 2023
ISBN 978-1-739929-34-3
Format Hardback
Pages 384
Dimensions 234 × 156 mm

Footprints

David Foot's Lifetime of Writing

Stephen Chalke

£22.00

A bumper collection of the work of award-winning West Country journalist and author David Foot.

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Description

A bumper collection of the work of award-winning West Country journalist and author David Foot, Footprints spans the full range of his work – from cricket, football and boxing to theatre, local history and murder.

With an observant eye, a fascination with human nature and a felicitous way with words, David Foot – who died in 2021 at the age of 92 – wrote with insight and freshness on a wide cast of characters: from cricketer Viv Richards and rugby star Carwyn James to actor Peter O’Toole, politician Harold Macmillan and poet Siegfried Sassoon.

Footprints is both a collection of writing by a superb wordsmith and also the intimate story of how a boy from humble rural roots in Somerset overcame setbacks to become a writer not only of beguiling prose but of wisdom, compassion and humanity – a writer, in the words of one reviewer, ‘of deep perception and rare sympathy’.

Praise for Footprints

'Footprints' is a joy, with pith and poetry juxtaposed in almost every paragraph. For those who like cricket, or simply good writing, it is a must.
Derek Pringle, The Cricket Paper
This posthumous selection reminds us how insightful and sympathetic a craftsman David Foot was, a writer to rank with Cardus or Robertson-Glasgow. If you buy just one cricket book this December, make it 'Footprints'.
Paul Edwards
I can’t think of many books which have made me think so deeply about life, writing and the writing life.
David Woodhouse
Reading 'Footprints' is the next best thing to meeting David Foot himself. And he was sensationally good company: wise and humorous, gossipy, gently scatological and unfailingly helpful. He died in the age of Covid, and his funeral was necessarily a small affair. Now, with the publication of 'Footprints', we have an appropriate thanksgiving – a sort of memorial service in literary form.
Paul Weaver, The Cricketer (awarding the book a full five balls)
The great cricket writer and man of the West Country is memorialised in this loving compilation of his best work.
Jon Hotten, Wisden Cricket Monthly
An enchanting collection, gentle and quietly wonderful.
Anthony McGowan, Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack

About the Author

Stephen Chalke was born in Salisbury, Wiltshire, in 1948 and now lives in Bristol. In 1996 he left full-time employment in adult education to become a writer and publisher of cricket books. He has won six national Book of the Year awards. In 2019 the Cricket Writers’ Club honoured him with the prestigious Peter Smith Award for his ‘outstanding contribution to the presentation of cricket to the public’.

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